


In Her Majesty's Secret Service

by RecessiveJean



Category: The Three Musketeers (2011)
Genre: Alternate History, Arranged Marriage, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood, Espionage, F/M, Family, Female Friendship, Gen, Historical References, Historical Religious Content, Intrigue, Loyalty, Miscarriage, Royalty, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 04:29:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2799608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RecessiveJean/pseuds/RecessiveJean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Queen Anne and Constance Bonacieux take steps to ensure France will not fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Nursery Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TLvop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/gifts).



> In order to have this align better with the movie, I've written as though Buckingham attained his duchy before 1622 and James I will not die until after 1627.
> 
> You had also better know that those historical inaccuracies will be far and away the least of which I am guilty before this is over.

_France, 1624_

***

Constance Bonacieux was of moderately good family, and her husband was dead.

“Is that all?” said Anne.

The Cardinal, who had invited the Queen to his salon and presented those two facts as the entire résumé of her newly-appointed lady in waiting, clucked his tongue impatiently.

“What can your Majesty mean, ‘is that all’?  She will be presented within the week. What more can you wish to know of the girl?”

Anne held her temper in check. He would _not_ goad her.

“I would know her age, and any experience she has in this capacity. Her politics too, although given that Your Eminence has chosen her personally, I can guess what they might be. You say she is of good family, but which one? What do they make of her appointment?”

“If her parents had not gone to their reward when the lady was in her infancy, no doubt they would be delighted to know their child is so favoured,” said the Cardinal. “As to experience, I am sure she managed her husband’s household adequately. She is gently reared and chaste, which qualities I think should matter more to a virtuous Queen of France than mere experience.”

 “A pretty sentiment from the man who will not be dressed by her,” Anne said dryly. “What of her age?”

“I believe she has between fifteen and twenty years. A more precise figure, if feminine impatience cannot weather the wait of one week, may be got from the Captain of my guard. His man Jussac is the girl’s uncle, and may possess more detailed knowledge of her.”

Anne thinned her lips.

“Never mind, Cardinal. I think I know all of her that I care to at this time.”

She took her leave of him so rapidly, Madame de Sénécy was forced to stumble out of her lady’s path to avoid a direct collision. By the time she’d gathered skirts and wits enough to hurry after the Queen, Anne was halfway down the corridor.

Anne took no notice of her Lady-of-honour, for she was too busy fuming. A spy in her camp. Well, the Bonacieux girl would hardly be the first; the very woman whose post she was meant to fill was another such. Madame de Sénécy’s succession to her present position had also been the Cardinal’s doing, and Anne was not surprised that he would rush to fill the vacant post with another informant.

“At this rate,” she muttered, “I will soon be unable to pick my teeth after breakfast without the Cardinal hearing of it by dinner.”

“Ma’am?” panted Madame de Sénécy.

“Nothing to concern you,” said Anne. “Strictly Queen’s business.”

Spies were, after all, the business of the Queen of France. Especially when they were set to spy on her.

***

_Spain, 1612_

***

As children they had not called it spying. It was watch-keeping, a game invented by the infanta Ana María to amuse herself and her siblings.

The children crept about the palace, tracking the comings and goings of their nurses, the courtiers, household staff—even the dwarf Bonami, though he tumbled to their schemes very early because he was closer to their eye level than most adults. They considered a fair target anybody whose mind was too fully occupied to tumble to the fact that the whispering, giggling Spanish royal children were clumsily dogging their heels, and they set against such people with vigour.

When the Duke of Mayenne arrived as ambassador from France, he was judged an acceptable target and they kept watch over him too. They did not realise at the time that he was also keeping watch on them.

When the ambassador arrived, the children listened to the plans that were taking shape—plans for the future of Ana and her brother Philip, for the prospects of France and Spain, and an alliance with a French princess and dauphin they had never met.

The marriages themselves were not shocking news. It was the sort of thing you come to expect when you’re in a certain position. But even royal children are not proof against curiosity or trepidation, and the children of the Spanish king were no different.

“What do you suppose she’s like?” Philip wondered. “The princess Elisabeth.” He was sprawled on a bench in the courtyard, picking fretfully at the laces on his tabard. Ana was far less indolent, inspecting the workings of her crossbow as she made her reply.

“I expect she’s much like us. She has a king and queen for her papa and mama. Her brother will be king someday. She’s a princess, Philip. Just like me.”

Then she loaded the bolt and took aim at a low-hanging apple on a tree across the lawn. She pressed the trigger, the bolt shot clear and the apple, pierced, thudded to the ground. Ana gave a whoop of triumph.

“I don’t think I would like to marry her if she’s _very_ much like you,” Philip said doubtfully.

“Pfft,” scoffed his sister, and raced off to inspect her conquest.

They would learn years later that the French Ambassador had been witness to that scene. He had been playing his own game of watch-keeping: the grown up version. He reported of them to France, and among the tales he carried was news of the infanta’s talent with the crossbow.

It was not a skill considered vital in a Queen of France. But it was something to know, and in the grown-up game of watch-keeping, anything you could know was always worth passing on.

***

Watch-keeping was not much needed to divine the path of the marriage negotiations once they were made public. King Philip kept his son and daughter closely apprised of the plans, and when the contracts were signed both children were given to understand it was a good thing, much to be desired.

“Isn’t it funny how we can want something, yet not want it at the same time?” Philip marvelled when their father had dismissed them from conference. “I mean to say, I am Spanish and of course I want what’s best for Spain. But on my honour, Ana, I don’t think I ever want to marry in my life!”

“That’s because you are just little,” said Ana. She was in no hurry to return to their siblings. Instead she leaned her back against the wall of the corridor, tipping her head up to study the ceiling and obliging Philip to wait with her. “If you were older, you would be _only_ happy.”

“Then, are you truly happy to marry King Louis?”

“I suppose it will be all right,” said Ana, though she looked a bit more doubtful on this point. “I mean to say, I must marry somebody, and nobody has said anything very awful about him yet.”

“Perhaps they have,” suggested Philip, “only they took care not to say it in front of you.”

The suggestion seemed so plausible, and the prospect so alarming, that they were motivated to plan their first game of watch-keeping in weeks. Philip and Anna dogged the heels of anybody they thought might be expected to speak of King Louis and by the end of the week had collected a few meagre scraps of gossip they thought might be relevant to Ana’s interests.

“Papa says he’s weak-willed and biddable,” she reported. “I don’t think that sounds very nice.”

“No, that’s actually good for you,” Philip promised. “It means you’ll win all your quarrels.”

“Perhaps,” said Ana, though she still looked uncertain. “What have _you_ heard?”

“Mayenne told the Condésa de Altamira that Louis enjoys hunting and sport.”

“Well that’s all right, so do I.”

“Yes, you can do that together, probably,” Philip agreed. “Look, Ana, I don’t think it will be so bad for you. You’ll have all your ladies with you so it will almost be like you’re still in Spain.”

“I will not have you, though,” Ana pointed out. The first real shadow of concern crossed her face. “Or Papa.”

“But you will have more family than you ever had before,” Philip encouraged her. “Come on, don’t look so glum. I am sorry I ever said anything. I think it will be all right.”

“Truly?” said Ana.

“Truly,” said Philip. “I promise.”

Such stock did Ana put in Philip’s promise that, when the ambassador requested a message he might take to the King from his bride-to-be, Ana bade him tell Louis how impatient she was to meet and be with him. This frank warmth charmed the Duke but horrified her governess, whose sense of piety and propriety were unequal to the task of mediating adolescent courtship.

“Ana!” she cried. “I beg you would show a more maidenly reserve.”

Ana was unaffected by this recommendation.

“I think instead, I had better tell him the truth from the first. You have taught me to be truthful anyway, have you not? I have spoken, and I will not recant.”

To this pert retort, Condésa de Altamira could make no reply. The ambassador’s report of Ana María following that meeting was favourable indeed.

***

_France, 1624_

***

God chose the King.

Constance had known this ever since she was five years old and God chose the new one; the one they had, even now. She had been in the convent garden picking flowers. Her skirt was dirtied by the sport, and the juice from the stems had just begun to stain her fingers when one of the nuns bade her come inside to pray for the new king.

Constance, because five-year-olds much prefer being dirty and sticky to praying for anyone, said “I don’t want to” and at once suffered a lengthy, demoralising lecture about the duty she bore the King. Because, apparently, God had picked him, just like a flower from the garden, and so you had to be respectful of that.

From that point on Constance had some vague notion of God tending all of them from on high, a vast white apron unfurled as he bent to scoop up a King here and there, shaking the dust from their feet and tumbling them all together in his lap to be sorted and arranged for viewing.

Whether or not God chose the Queen as well had never come up. Constance fervently wished it had. Then she might better understand how to feel about being chosen to serve the Queen (Constance herself had only been chosen by Cardinal Richelieu, rather than God Himself, but that was probably appropriate because Constance was not nearly so important as the King).

If she couldn’t feel anything about her new position, though, she would have settled for feeling anything other than _sore._ The carriage her uncle had hired was badly sprung and since Constance had been widowed very young, with no children to her name, she lacked the personal padding of a more mature woman. Every time they hit a rut—and the streets of Paris bore as many ruts as some country roads, in certain quarters—she gasped and screwed her eyes shut.

Knowing whether or not her new mistress had been chosen by God, or merely the King who had been chosen by God all those years ago, might have given her something to focus on other than the bruises that were forming on the underside of her thighs and the ominous silence of her uncle.

Jussac had taken no notice of her for the journey until, about the fifth or sixth time she sucked in her breath, he turned on her and growled “ _Will_ you contain yourself? I don’t remember you making half this much noise when you were a child. You had two years with Bonacieux; did the man not teach you to hold your tongue?”

Constance pinched her lips and stared fixedly at her hands. She would not tell him he had no cause to remember her childhood, as he had been absent for most of it. She would neither tell him that the only thing Bonacieux had taught her was to stay out of his way when he’d had bad luck at cards.

Responding to any angry overture from her uncle was not an option, since any response would be taken for impertinence. It had been that way since the day she’d met the man who inherited guardianship of her and the modest fortune left by her parents.

She had not even known until years after their death that she had an uncle. She had been sent to the nuns before she could remember, to be trained in whatever arts they considered suitable for a gentlewoman. The convent had been all she knew of life until one day, when she was about six years old, her mother’s brother had appeared in the doorway, a hulking, angry stranger.

He had barked questions at her until she cried. He then decried her tears as insolence, and boxed her ears.

Constance had stopped crying immediately, because she did not want to be struck again. The nuns answered Jussac’s questions about her conduct, character and schooling while she stood silently by, deciding with the cool, black-and-white reasoning of a child that she hated this man. While he questioned her caretakers she seethed with plans of everything she would do to him, if ever she grew large enough.

Now, jolted viciously in the back of a carriage, Constance was not yet large enough to do any of the things she had wished to, and she was finally old enough to know she never _would_ be large enough to mete revenge out with her fists. But there were other ways to strike at a man that did not involve brute force, and so limited was Jussac’s intellect that Constance was confident any means she could employ to strike at him would remain undetected until it was too late for him to do anything about it.

Such had it been for Bonacieux.

The carriage hit another rut. Constance knocked her head against the door. The blow stung like a box to the ears. Her eyes watered, but she made no sound.

Constance Bonacieux knew very well how to hold her tongue.

***

_Spain, 1615_

***

Ana’s first wedding was to the Duke of Lerma. Of course it wasn’t a _real_ wedding, like the kind of wedding she was supposed to have with Louis. She was fourteen, and quite able to understand that the duke was only meant to be standing in for her true husband. An unmarried princess travelling across the border would have been unthinkable, so she _had_ to be married first. But it still seemed very off to be obliged to make vows to Lerma when God and ambassadors had chosen Louis especially for her husband. Consequently she considered the business with Lerma, no matter how legal and proper, to be one of the most irregular parts of the entire proceeding.

At least the Burgos cathedral was resplendent, and her father and brothers were there, which was exactly how she would have wished it if she could have ordered the entire affair herself.

When the proxy marriage and celebration had concluded, the infanta was ushered gently away to get some rest in preparation for her journey to meet her new spouse. But Ana, keenly conscious of what the journey home must mean for her now that “home” was not a thing she would share with her family, waited until her household was abed. Then she slipped out from under the counterpane, lit a taper from her bedside lamp and swiftly, silently traced a route to the chamber of her brother.

Philip answered her knock with such speed that she knew he must have been waiting for her. He tugged her into the room and they stood together just inside his doorway, pale and nervous, and tried to face whatever lay ahead.

“We have survived this day,” said Ana. “There remains now only all the other days.”

“It—it wasn’t so very bad, was it?” Philip asked. Ana was quick to reassure him that it was not.

“Not at all! Why, you got through the whole thing very well. I mean, it was odd to be marrying somebody who isn’t my husband, but I understood why it had to be that way. Truthfully I had mostly wondered if you might not be sick, like you were last month at the court play.”

“Oh, that,” said Philip, and coloured a fearsome scarlet even in the dim glow of Ana’s taper. “Yes, I had wondered too. But I think that time was only a little to do with nerves. Remember Bonami had just died, and I was very sad about that.”

His words gave Ana pause.

“Were . . . were you not sad today, then?”

“Yes,” Philip admitted. “Because you are leaving, and now I must be _married_ , which I don’t think I will enjoy very much. But I could bear the marrying part for myself, if only you were still in Spain.”

“I probably shouldn’t like to hear you say that,” Ana said doubtfully. “Now that I am Queen of France.”

“Probably not,” Philip agreed cheerfully. “But I will say this wedding of yours was not as bad for me as the court play. It’s a different kind of sad. You are not _dying_ , after all.”

“No-o,” Ana agreed. But she sounded as if she were not sure. “I _am_ leaving, though.”

“Yes, but not to be with God; only to be with French people.”

Ana, progressively less conscious of her duty as Queen of France, could not quite see this as philosophically as her brother. “At least if I were with God and Mama, in Heaven, I might look in on you. I could see you every day and you could say special novenas for me. I would be closer to you dead than I will be in France. When I am in France we will not be able to speak to each other at all.”

“Well then, write to me,” Philip ordered. “Write me of everything that happens here. Tell me if you are happy or lonely or sad. Then you won’t seem so far away.”

“I won’t ever tell you if I am lonely,” Ana protested. “You will worry.”

“If you will never tell me you are lonely I must assume you are _always_ lonely, and only pretending happiness for my sake, and I will worry all the more.”

“Very well,” said Ana. “I will tell you all.”

“No matter what?”

“No matter what.”

The deal struck, they embraced each other as fiercely and mournfully as you would expect of any two children who had spent all their lives together, and must thereafter spend all their lives apart.

***

The less said about the journey from Burgos to the Bidassoa, the better. The roads were bad, the weather not much better, and Ana found holding her temper over the course of those four days took every shred of self-restraint that she possessed. The morning that she was handed onto the barge to complete her journey to France, she told herself, quite sternly, that it was all worth it. That it _must_ be worth it.

Then she looked ahead to the resplendent pavilion crowned with the Spanish flag, which waited on the island in the middle of the Bidassoa, and willed herself to believe it.

The Spanish bridal party reached the island at the same time as the French one, and it soon felt crowded on those two brief acres of land. Ana was helped into a rather magnificent chair as her ladies arrayed themselves around her, kneeling on cushions in a posture that seemed a little ridiculous for its pageantry. All the while Ana stole glances at the newly-arrived French princess across the island, seated in her own French pavilion of white silk.

When at last they were able to leave their seats and greet one another, Ana studied her new sister intently, trying to see in her anything that Philip might love. Princess Elisabeth had pale, intent little features, and her robes were beautiful. She did not have the farthingale that weighed heavily on Ana’s gown. She looked so light and pretty that Ana found herself wishing for garments a little less cumbersome than her own.

The adults thronged around them, their attitudes a curious mix of deferential and solicitous. Her hand was kissed and she was saluted with all due ceremony, but Ana resolved to shut them out entirely. For this moment she wanted it only to be they two: herself and the one other girl who understood her position better than anyone else in the world.

Princess Elisabeth bore the transfer bravely, but when her French company left her, Ana saw her sister-in-law’s resolve give way. The girl broke down weeping, and none of the comforts offered by the new Spanish women around her were to any effect.

Ana, on impulse, broke rank from her people and hustled her ungainly farthingale back across the brief stretch of land to her original boat, where she put a hand out to Elisabeth.

“I love him very much,” she said, in rather badly-mangled French. “I think you will like him also.”

Elisabeth did not stop crying, but her sobs did seem to abate. Ana petted her encouragingly, and said “I like your dress.”

Then, seeing that the greater part of her escort were looking very awkward about this deviation from their planned programme, Ana took a step back.

“ _Bonne chance_!” she whispered, because it seemed an encouraging thing to say, and she rather wished somebody would say it to her. She allowed herself to be beckoned back across the island to the French pavilion, where her new boat waited to take her to her new home.

“With nerves like that,” thought Ana, as the boat set out for shore, “I think she had better not perform in court plays either.”

She resolved to write Philip of that information directly she reached land.

***

The best part of her wedding journey was Bordeaux itself. Always, Ana would remember it as such. The beds were good, the food was excellent, and it was where she met Louis for the first time.

Meeting Louis was when she knew it would all work out.

At first meeting his hand was put in hers, and before she could lose her nerve completely Ana looked directly into his face to see what it was she’d gotten herself into.

Louis was of a height with her, fair-haired and boyish, and looked as flustered a human being as Ana had ever seen. He blinked, opened his mouth, then closed it again as it seemed to strike him that he was not sure what to say. She warmed to him at once, the way you would to a nervous kitten. Besides, even through his uncertainty he clasped her hand as though he intended to hold it for the rest of his life.

After a moment’s careful thought, he settled on just the right words.

“It—look, it will be all right, I think,” he said earnestly. “You and me, I mean. I am pretty sure of that.”

If she had ever been challenged to name the moment she fell in love, Ana would have named the moment that the stammering King of France held her hand, and promised her, with all sincerity, that they would be just fine.

***

_France, 1615_

***

“Your uncle is late. What do you make of that?”

“My uncle is always late,” said Constance. “It is of no profit to him to be punctual.”

The nun who had meant to make a casual observation to pass time was aghast to have provoked such insubordination.

“That’s no way to speak of your uncle! He would hardly have got a post in the palace guard if he could not be punctual, now, could he?”

“But see,” said Constance, “there it profits him to be punctual. I am nothing next to the security of a pension.”

“This cynicism is very unbecoming in a maid of so few years,” the older woman muttered.

“I have _eleven_ years,” said Constance, greatly offended that her years be called few when she clearly had so many.

“Ah! A multitude,” was the sarcastic reply.

Constance firmed her lips and sat a little straighter, pointedly ignoring the jibe. A moment’s silence passed, and then “Constance, did you not know I was making fun of you just now?”

“I knew it,” Constance admitted.

“But you said nothing. Do you so esteem me, that you would bear my insult without retort?”

Constance shook her head. “I do not think I esteem you very much, Sister Colombe.”

“Hrmm. And why not?”

“You take more food than you are allowed, and you give less than you are obliged. Also, I have twice seen you put money in your pocket that was from the collection box. That is not estimable.”

To be accidentally revealed as a petty thief in the vestibule of the convent was, understandably, unsettling to Sister Colombe. But she rallied with remarkable speed.

“To whom have you spoken of this?”

“Nobody.”

“And why not?”

Constance turned the full force of her stare on the nun. “They have not asked me.”

Sister Colombe stood a moment, turning this marvel of selective discretion over in her mind. At last she decided that the pursuit of its origin was a worthier pastime than threats to ensure the girl’s silence. Besides, she had rather an uneasy feeling that truly threatening Constance would provoke the opposite of the desired result.

“Tell me, who taught you to hold your tongue?”

“I don’t think we’ve had that lesson yet.”

“Not formally, no, yet you are no mean study . . . who is your teacher, I wonder?”

This was puzzling. “You are my teacher, Sister Colombe.”

“Then listen to your teacher, Constance, and may it profit you: discretion is a marketable skill. Your uncle may not see profit in you now, but the time will come when your discretion is esteemed, and it will mean money. For you, or him. But most likely for him,” she concluded, for Sister Colombe had many years more than Constance, and she had come by her cynicism the old-fashioned way.

Constance gave no sign of having understood or even heard this lecture. She was looking out the door into the courtyard.

“He’s here,” she said, and a moment later stood to greet her relative. The topic of focus having been so clearly changed, Sister Colombe did not revisit her advice. Whether or not the girl had understood, only time would tell.

***

_1615 - 1617_

***

After her marriage, watch-keeping became a vital component Ana’s survival. The infanta Ana María had listened at doors and peeked over balconies to learn things nobody would have told a child. Queen Anne bent her every instinct honed over the years of playing at nursery games to understanding the currents of power, privilege and deceit that had been thrumming through the French court for decades.

In France, the game she once played with her brothers and sisters was quickly put in its proper perspective. In France it seemed everybody was immersed up to the teeth in schemes and intrigues of someone else’s making, and the Queen of France was far from proof against such intrigues.

Her husband was as much a target of the plotting as she; possibly even more so. And what a quaint and curious husband he was, too.

Queen Anne was used to kings. She had grown up with kings, and boys who would be king, and was much confused by the way her new husband did not seem to act like either one. He was shy and sensitive and unsure. Almost at once, Anne resolved that whatever watch-keeping was required on her part to keep the King safe, she would play a personal part in it. Louis seemed not even to realise half the intrigues that surrounded him. She suspected that were it not for the careful tutelage provided him by his friend M. Charles-Albert de Luynes, he would not even have known of the few schemes that he did.

This was all confirmed for her by Marie de Rohan, first _surintendente_ of Anne’s household.

Marie was young, merry and entirely the mistress of herself, since a good-natured and overindulgent father allowed her nearly free reign over her own affairs. Marie was much brighter and less staid than most of the Spanish ladies Anne kept with her, and made a lively addition to the household.

Too lively, if you asked some people.

“Why _shouldn’t_ I listen to her?” Anne demanded, when called to task by the Spanish ambassador for falling in too readily with Marie de Rohan and her schemes. “She is my friend.”

“Not everybody who is friendly is a friend to you, Your Majesty,” Monteléone said censoriously.

“Should I take that as a warning of _your_ intentions?” Anne retorted. The Spanish ambassador was so taken aback by the question that he could make no reply, and the young Queen sailed almost majestically from the room, which effect she promptly spoilt by breaking into a run when she spotted her friend waiting some distance down the passageway.

“Did he give you much difficulty?” Marie wondered, linking arms with the Queen as they met in the corridor.

“Not so much,” Anne said lightly. She gave a quick skipping step, shaking the interview from her shoulders. “Anyway, why should I listen to Monteléone? He orders me about dreadfully, and he does not like that Louis and I are such good friends. He says we are too comfortable, like brother and sister; as if that were anything to trouble himself about! My very best friends in all the world were my brothers and sisters before I came here. It’s good to have a husband who is your best friend too, don’t you think?”

“I suppose it must be,” Marie agreed. “I could do with a little of that myself.”

But King Philip was disinclined to agree that this was a good thing, and in response to letters drafted by Monteléone, admonished his daughter to conduct herself with greater circumspection in the future.

“Do you think you had better do as he says?” Marie wondered. “I mean, he _is_ the King of Spain, after all, and your father besides. Not that being a father always counts for much, since mine hardly counts for anything, but I think your father is not very like my own.”

The two were secreted in a small alcove in Anne’s bedchamber, hiding from Dona Theresa and Dona Estefanía. Anne, scrutinising the letter for a third time, said she wasn’t sure.

“I think I might _have_ to listen eventually. Only all this business here in Paris, with Prince Henri setting everyone in the family against him despite the treaty he signed to keep peace, seems to have helped them forget about me a little. I am not nearly as important as an insurrectionist prince. With all this treason business going on, maybe the very best thing we could do just now is to keep watch.”

“Keep watch over _what_?” Marie wondered. Anne’s eyes lit with merriment as the prospect of putting the childhood game into play once more presented itself.

“When I was a girl,” she whispered, “we used to play a game.”

They bent their heads together and the Queen of France described the childhood sport of keeping watch in terms that would allow it to be used to spy on the people most closely concerned in the power struggle between Anne’s husband, her mother-in-law, and the brother-in-law making a bid for the French throne.

***

“You neglected to mention,” panted Marie, “that this game had such an _edge_ to it.”

“In my defence,” retorted the Queen of France, putting her shoulder to the same door as her friend, and bearing all her weight down upon it until the latch clicked, “I have previously played it with children, nursemaids and witless ambassadors. Never during rebellion. Perhaps some adjustment should have been allowed for keeping watch on the affairs of men who— _oh!_ ” and she leaped back from the door just as an axe head thudded into the wood.

“This is madness,” Marie hissed, abandoning her post at the door when Anne directed her. They retreated into the palace at a brisk pace. “We are meant to be travelling to safety at the Louvre, not chasing after some ridiculous scrap of intelligence that Condé may or may not have concealed plans for a war machine in his mother’s home.”

“We _are_ travelling to safety at the Louvre; we are only taking a longer and rather more hazardous way around. We will reach safety by and by.”

“I would be more settled in my mind if we reached it sooner than later.”

“We won’t linger. But what we overheard du Plessis saying seemed very definite, so I want to search the storeroom he spoke of. I still think the plans must be here somewhere, and the storeroom sounds a secure place.”

“But why should du Plessis have known about this machine? He can’t be in sympathy with Condé, can he? Not while he serves the King’s mother.”

“Her-Other-Majesty has a hand in everything,” Anne said firmly. “I wouldn’t put it past her. You _know_ what she’s like with Louis, and how she insists on running him. She runs him because she doesn’t like that she is not Queen anymore. Which is foolishness, because being a Queen is very trying.”

“This is not the best time to discuss family matters. We shouldn’t even _be_ here.”

 “Yes, and that last fact alone may save us,” said Anne. Together they continued their journey into the depths of the Luxembourg palace, which already rang with the shouts of looters and defenders of the Huguenot cause.

“Whatever can you mean by that?” said Marie. They sped up as the shouts drew nearer, and Anne made her answer between gulps of air.

“I mean they will not be looking for us in particular, so as long as they do not see us up close they may not know who we are. We’ll just be two of Her-Other-Majesty’s ladies who got away late, and I don’t think they will bother with us as such. No, not _that_ way,” as Marie made to turn to the left, “we want this direction.”

They fled down the passageway together, finding at the end of it a set of magnificent double doors. Marie reached for them.

“Not those,” Anne scolded. “Did you not study the plans at _all_?” and she wrenched at the handle of a much smaller door off to the side.

The room they entered was in such disarray as to suggest it had been raided in a great hurry prior to an even hastier departure. Anne, heedless of the clutter, went directly to the back wall and prodded fiercely at one of a pair of iron sconces. Nothing happened.

“Must be the other. Can you reach it?” she called. Then, as Marie struggled to pull down on the sconce, Anne turned her attention to the rest of the room.

“They’ve taken almost everything of importance I think. Perhaps it is gone after all.”

 “Can you help me with this?” Marie huffed. “If it’s the right sconce, it must be stuck.”

“Hmm?” Anne paused in front of a half-open case. A sheet of paper had fallen to one side, and the Queen bent to pull it loose. The sketch she found was baffling—some kind of ship, but with a sail like none other she had seen. “What a curious—”

“ _Your Majesty_!”

Abruptly recalled to their mission, Anne let the paper fall to the ground and flew to Marie’s side. Together they levered the sconce away from the wall, and a door even smaller than that they had used to enter swung open.

“After you, Ma’am,” said Marie. Then she and Anne exchanged looks and, suddenly suffused with giggles, raced away down the passage as the looters of Marie de Medici’s palace raided and burned the Luxembourg behind them.

***

The Queen did not, in the end, have much effect on the outcome of that particular war. The plans for the war machine she had overheard Armand Jean du Plessis discussing with a councilman remained undiscovered by the Queen and her lady. Condé was arrested, and Louis showed an uncommon measure of spine the following year by deposing his own mother into the bargain, and making a rather violent end of her pet favourite, Concini.

Monteléone sent Spain highly favourable reports of Anne’s most commendable composure throughout the entire ordeal, but Anne, upon reflection, thought maybe a holiday from watch-keeping would be the appropriate choice to make.

She did not confide this to her husband, since he hadn’t known about the watch-keeping to begin with, but when they met for country sport one morning she did confide in him how relieved in her mind she was that all had events had concluded so much in his favour.

“Oh!” said Louis. “Oh, well, yes. Thank you. Well, I mean, it was time for Mother to push along, you know? She _would_ insist on poking about in our affairs, and it was getting tiresome. I hope it didn’t worry you overmuch when it was all in the works, though.”

“Oh no,” Anne assured him. “I was quite sure you would work it out.”

“Yes?” Louis sounded pleased. “Well. It can be a tricky business, though. Gets a bit messy sometimes, politics.”

“I am sure,” murmured Anne.

“I’ve awarded all of Condé’s land and monies to M. de Luynes,” Louis added. “Good friend, de Luynes. Deserves a bit of a coming-up in the world. Planning to make him a duke, actually.”

“He will be pleased to know it,” said Anne. “You are very generous, my lord.”

“Yes, well. Oh. Yes,” Louis shuffled his feet, and blushed slightly. “He, um, asked me about your friend. Marie, isn’t it? He rather thought maybe she . . .you know. And all that. Now that he’s going to be a person of some consequence, he’ll want a wife. So perhaps she . . . well.”

“Yes,” said Anne, reflecting with genuine pleasure on the possibility of her friend and her husband’s friend making an alliance. “Yes, perhaps she might.”

“Well,” said Louis. He shot a shy, sideways smile in her direction. “Well this is all turning out for the best, then, isn’t it?”

“Do you know,” said Anne, as she took a discreet side-step closer to her husband so she could link her fingers through his, “I think it is.”

***

_1622_

***

Constance learned of her wedding three days before it happened. That was three days more than Jussac had meant her to have; she overheard him telling the nuns that he would be taking her away in that time, which gave her three days to decide what she wanted to do about it.

Running away was considered and rejected. Running away would be uncomfortable, dangerous, and ultimately ruinous. It was an impractical choice.

Refusal was possible. Direct refusal would not gain her much ground, but professing the faith and taking up the veil would put her out of Jussac’s reach for good. The very notion of putting his nose so out of joint gave Constance such a warm, satisfied feeling in the pit of her stomach that for a few hours she did seriously contemplate life as a nun. It was certainly something she’d considered before—difficult to be raised in a convent and not think of it at least a few times—but this was the first time she’d had a real reason to _want_ it.

That, of course, was the deciding point. If she did not want to be a nun for any higher reason than to spite her uncle, Constance thought she had probably better not try it. Which left only acquiescence to the plan, in the hope that whoever he’d found for her would not be quite as disagreeable as Jussac himself.

 So Constance consented to being introduced to M Bonacieux, who at thirty-five was a little less than twice her age, and ordinary in every respect. His clothing, face and manner were entirely unremarkable, and Constance, while far from stirred to poetic raptures over his frame, thought that perhaps there were worse things than the fate of an unexceptional life.

Sister Colombe was less phlegmatic on the subject. As she brought Constance to the chapel she went so far as to say “the man’s chin is soft. It cannot be for the good.”

“If his chin is soft,” said Constance, “I will know where to strike him first if he proves disagreeable.”

“Hrm,” said Sister Colombe. “I think perhaps we have something to answer for in our rearing of you, if you have not even married the man and already you contemplate striking him.”

“The salve of your conscience over the question of your care of me must be left to God alone.”

Sister Colombe made a noise that was half snort, half cough. “I hope his will is stronger than his chin, this bridegroom of yours. He will need it to keep pace with you.”

Constance thought of this remark all through the ceremony. The borderline insult of an elderly nun was probably not the typical reflection of a bride, but then most brides were probably not obliged to stare at such a soft chin all through the wedding mass. Every time she saw the chin of the man she was marrying, she imagined what a will that matched the chin would look like.

Somehow, she could not reach the same conclusion as Sister Colombe. A man with a soft chin could have a weak will, certainly, but he could have had any number of additional character deficiencies that would combine to allow him to keep pace with her. And not always pleasantly, either.

Constance was not worried, exactly. But she was sober and reflective through the ceremony, and when her husband offered her his elbow to escort her from the church, Constance felt the closest thing to uncertainty that she had ever felt in her life.

A welcome distraction presented itself in the street. As the newly wedded couple emerged from the chapel, their way was blocked by a crowd packed shoulder-to-shoulder along the roadside. There was a general clamour unlike the usual noise of city streets, which meant something particular must be happening. Constance, who should possibly have been intimidated by a crowd after being reared in the relatively spacious confines of a convent, wondered only how best to become part of the crowd so she could see what held their focus.

“What is this?” Bonacieux wondered, but he did not approach the people to ask. So Constance stepped closer to the crowd, touched a woman on the shoulder, and repeated her husband’s question.

“Why are you standing here?” she wondered.

“The English Duke has come,” was the answer. “Duke of Buckingham, he is! Fine figure of a man, don’t you think? Here to court Princess Henriette for their Prince Charles, they say, though it will mean breaking an agreement with Spain to do it. Very grand fellow. Face like—well! You know.”

Constance did not know, but she was curious to see. Bonacieux seemed content to stand there, so they stood together, waiting, until the English duke passed by.

He _was_ quite fine to look at. His chin did not have the same problem as her new husband’s. He was, in fact, as unlike Bonacieux as any man could be. The comparison of clothing would be unfair, of course, where both men were of such disparate means, but even without Bonacieux’s drab wedding suit to compare to the peacock silks of the Duke, the comparison was not to Bonacieux’s credit.

Where Bonacieux was nondescript, Buckingham was a masterpiece of human form. He was the cut marble statue to Bonacieux’s clay model. He was _dazzling_.

Constance recognised this in him. She had eyes and wits to observe, after all. But whatever flutter of attraction seemed to bubble up in the breast of all women around her did not touch Constance. She noted the cloth of his suit, the shape of his chin, and understood that these were his assets. But she did not press a hand to flushed cheeks, nor catch her breath at the sight of him.

Instead, she wondered how long he would block their way home, and if he understood how many people he was inconveniencing by passing this way just now.

“That was a fine looking fellow,” Bonacieux reflected, as Buckingham’s retinue finally moved on, and the crowds dispersed.

“I suppose,” said Constance. “But I think today I prefer a man who can walk through the streets without causing a crowd. There is something to be said for passing unnoticed.”

And though Bonacieux did not really understand what she meant by this, he nodded all the same.

***

The duke wore white. And gold. And diamonds. And pearls.

The duke was altogether dazzling to behold as he bowed over the hand of King Louis and presented his compliments.

“Your Majesty,” he said, over the sound of hundreds of tiny seed pearls dropping from his garments and rolling across the floor. “King James sends his warmest regards.”

“Oh . . . yes?” said Louis, transfixed by the intricate gold embroidery that traced the shoulder seams of Buckingham’s doublet. “Well, yes. Thank you. And—oh! The same to him, of course.”

The amazed young king watched the courtiers surreptitiously crouch down and scoop up the rolling pearls. Years of conflict had bled the treasury badly, and the kind of wealth that Buckingham was shedding in the audience chamber was of a sort difficult to come by in France.

A gentle cough from one of his ministers recalled Louis to himself. “Oh, and welcome,” Louis added hastily, “and we hope . . . well. Henriette is very curious to meet you, of course.”

“Of course,” purred the Duke. “The joyous occasion is much to be desired. And naturally,” he offered a contrite smile, “His Majesty hopes that the Queen of France is less the sister of the infanta of Spain than she is the sister of the princess of France.”

Louis looked discomfited at this. He did not much like being reminded that his own sister’s marriage would be got at the expense of marriage arrangements made for his wife’s sister. Yes, it was _Spain_ , and Louis was no great admirer of the Spanish, but still. Family, and all that.

“Oh well I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “I mean, Anne is Henriette’s sister too, of course. Through me. I’m sure she’d be glad if any of her sisters were fortunate. In marriage. And in families too, given that now we’re . . . she’s . . . well. In the family way. Very proper for her to want good things for Henriette, I’m sure.”

“Quite so,” agreed Buckingham, “her Majesty’s generous spirit is a credit to France and Spain alike. Your Majesty is very fortunate in her.”

“Yes,” said Louis. “Yes, I am. In her, and also in our little—well.” He smiled. “This will be a nice visit, I hope, and we’ve arranged some amusements for you of course. You know the sort of thing. There will be a fête tomorrow. Promises to be something quite wonderful.”

“I look forward to it, Your Majesty,” said Buckingham. And he smiled in a way that Louis, had Louis been paying properly close attention, could not have liked.

***

The fête given in honour of Buckingham was the kind that is put on more with a view to making people talk about it for years than ensuring that everyone is actually having a good time. By the time you had taken stock of the decorations, the music, peoples’ costumes and the sort of food being served, you had worn yourself out and were looking for any excuse to go home.

At least, this was the case with Queen Anne. She grudgingly allowed that perhaps not everybody might feel so exhausted, especially if they were not currently _enceinte_ , but that didn’t stop her stealing a quiet moment during one of the ballets to sneak away and settle on a chair with only two of her ladies for company.

“It’s only the usual way,” Dona Theresa promised, as the Queen reclined in her chair and professed herself miserably uncomfortable. “Everything is more taxing than usual. It will pass.”

“I will hold you to that,” muttered the Queen. “And hear this: if your promise should prove untrue, you may find yourself recalled to Spain.”

“Tsk,” said Dona Theresa. “Temper! We will help your Majesty early to bed this evening.”

“How?” said Anne. “I cannot leave early without causing offence to both my husband the host, and the Duke his guest.”

“I am sure Buckingham has other matters on his mind than your Majesty,” Estefanía said firmly. “And I think King Louis will be only too glad to see that you are taking good care of your health at this point in time.”

But Anne still expressed doubt, so at last a bargain was struck. The King would be invited to attend them and the matter put to him directly. If he instructed Anne to return to the Louvre and rest there, she would do it.

Dona Theresa at once took herself away, and had not been gone more than a few minutes before Marie de Rohan found them. Marie’s shoulders heaved, and her eyes were alight with the fever of intrigue. She flung herself down beside Anne and clutched the queen’s sleeve.

“Your Majesty,” she whispered. “I must speak with you. Urgently. Of Buckingham.”

“Ugh, what of him?” said the Queen, pettishly. “If one more person tells me how his cloth-of-gold doublet makes him look like the sun god, I shall set the room on fire and see how their sun god fares then.”

“No, Ma’am. It . . .” and here Marie faltered, registering belatedly the presence of Estefanía in the corner. Anne followed her gaze, and at once divined what manner of news Marie must bring.

“You may speak freely before Estefanía,” she said firmly. “She has known me from childhood. This will not undo her.”

“If your Majesty is certain,” said Marie, not looking certain in the least. “I must tell you of a conversation, Ma’am, which I know I was not meant to overhear—”

“Ah!” cried Dona Estefanía. “Not more of your watch-keeping game, my lady? I thought those childish intrigues were well past.”

“Ma’am,” said Marie, “I am afraid you are right. It is not a children’s game that we play now.”

“Sometimes,” said Anne, “I wonder if it ever was. Maybe we were always playing a grown-up’s game, only we did not know it yet.”

“The children of the King of Spain can be pardoned if they are something _more_ than ordinary children,” Estefanía decided. “Your parents did always speak so well of your wit, my lady, and your brother’s also. I am sure you were quite advanced for your age.”

“And I am sure you are not objective in the least,” retorted the Queen. “But hush. Marie, what conversation?”

“It was only a part. I could not hear all. He was behind a curtain with one whose face I could not see, and whose voice I did not hear. But Buckingham I heard aright. I could not mistake him. Your Majesty,” Marie tugged fretfully at her lady’s sleeve, “he spoke of a war machine.”

Anne stiffened.

“A war machine? Not—surely not the same as we were trying to investigate at the Luxembourg.”

“I couldn’t say for sure it was the same. But what if it is? What if his mission is all—all pretext? What if he’s really here to find the plans for the machine?”

“But how can he? _We_ don’t even know where they are. And this courtship cannot all be pretext, or else the insult to Henriette will be even worse than the insult to my sister when she is refused as a bride for the English prince.”

Marie admitted this was so, but she was still highly agitated. At last Anne put out a hand, patted her friend’s arm, and urged her to settle herself.

“If it will make you easier in your mind, perhaps there is a way. We will think of something.”

“Thinking is not so bad,” said Estefanía, “but I trust your Majesty will not be so foolish as to put thought to deed, in your condition. Your greatest responsibility is now the future of France.”

“And what is this business,” cried Marie, “if not the future of France?”

“We don’t know _what_ it is yet,” sighed Anne. “Please, Marie. You’re giving me head-ache. Can you accept my promise that we will discuss this further, and let me rest a little while until his Majesty arrives?”

Marie tendered her promise to let the matter rest for the time being. Then she waited quietly by as Dona Theresa returned with the King and his retinue. Louis at once bent over the chair, hovering near Anne, though he was not quite able to bring himself to touch her.

“My dear, are you unwell? Should we summon . . . someone?”

“No, no, nothing like,” Anne reassured him. “Only I am very fatigued. My ladies tell me it’s to be expected, but expecting it somehow doesn’t make the weathering of it much easier.”

“No, no of course not,” Louis agreed. “Well, of course if you . . . I mean, you should go. I think. If you like. You should go, and rest, and of course nobody will question that.”

“Thank you my lord,” Anne said, and smiled in such a sweet, weary way that Louis coloured deep scarlet, and opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. After a moment’s open-mouthed silence, he collected himself enough to make a gesture that seemed to mean ‘good evening’ and Anne took her leave of him, her ladies following close behind.

***

The scheme to which Anne consented was none of her design. It was entirely the urgent belief of Marie de Rohan that Buckingham was scheming against the crown and entirely the energies of that lady which propelled Anne to go along with the plan.

They would purport to visit the apartments of the Princess of Conti, who was unwell that day. Their path would take them near the section of the palace where Buckingham was quartered, and it would give them the chance to spy out any untoward doings on his part.

At least, that was Marie’s view of the thing. Anne, rather more pragmatic in her weariness, had asked snappishly what luck Marie thought they would possess, that Buckingham would against all odds be engaged in something obviously sinister just at the moment they passed his rooms. Marie said, loftily, that her Majesty needed to have a little faith.

“Faith!” cried Anne. “If I have faith in anything, it is that the match will be made with Henriette, at the expense of the last child my mother brought into this world.”

A more perceptive, less excitable woman than Marie de Rohan would have rightly discerned the fear lying at the back of this reference, but she only said “nothing is to keep him from making the match _and_ spying for England, is it?”

So Anne did not speak of her mother again, nor of the child who had sent her from the birthing-bed to the grave. She went along with the scheme, taking three of her ladies with her to visit the princess in her sickbed, where they passed several agreeable hours.

At last, on the pretext of finding the room too warm and close, Anne stepped out into the corridor with Marie.

“If we are to do this,” she said, “let us do it now. The sooner we discover no scheme, the sooner I can go back to my bed.”

“His rooms are back the way we came.” Marie took her friend by the arm and drew her along the corridor. “We need not look in all of them. Only let us see what we can learn. He means no good, I am convinced of it.”

Anne followed without complaint, at first because she knew it would be futile to argue, and then because they had reached the section allotted to Buckingham and his cohort, where speech would have meant speedy discovery.

There were several doors that showed a light at the bottom, but most were the feeble, flickering light of a single lamp before bed. Only one light showed up bright and strong, as if several lamps and a good fire still burned beyond. Instinctively Anne drew closer to that door, and Marie followed her lead.

Together they crouched on either side, put their ear by the panels, and listened. From behind the door came scraps of conversation, one of the speakers possibly Buckingham, the other much older and thinner of voice.

“. . . burned in the palace. Rotten luck for us.”

“You assume we could have got it out had it not.”

“I think du Plessis could have been bought for the job. But no matter. The only copy left is in a vault in Venice. Bloody thing was designed by Leonardo da Vinci and it’s said to be impregnable. I like our luck there much less.”

“There have got to be people for the job.”

“No doubt there are. But the finding of them will take time, and the hiring of them, money.”

“Money is one thing I have in abundance. Find me these people, and I will take care of the—hang on. What was that?”

Anne rocked back, horrified. Had they made some sound? Brushed against the door? Whatever it was, a man’s footsteps sounded across the floor, drawing rapidly nearer. They had only moments to act.

Marie surged to her feet, caught Anne by the hand and flew back down the hall with only the rustle of their skirts to mark their path. They had just reached the corner when the door opened. They looked back in time to see the Duke of Buckingham looking away from them, down the opposite length of the passageway.

Then he turned and saw them.

Whether or not he was close enough to divine their identities, Marie did not wait to discover. She grabbed Anne’s arm and cried “my lady, _run_.”

Anne did not stop to consider the wisdom of obedience. She did not pause to reflect that it would not be impossible to invent some pretext for her presence in the area: perhaps even beg him to call off pursuit of Henriette, and urge King James to honour the contract with Spain for his son, for the sake of her sister. Any portion of that might have made a convincing cover, but Marie was so lost to herself, so witless with blind panic, that she communicated that panic to her mistress at the expense of cold reason and sent them both in headlong flight down the darkened corridor.

At some point during their escape, Marie lost her grip on Anne’s arm. Anne could never remember at what point it had happened; she only knew that it must have, because of what happened next.

As they reached the top of the staircase, Anne’s foot caught the hem of her gown. She lurched; wobbled; teetered on the brink of an inky abyss for what seemed like the entirety of her life, and someone else’s life besides.

She saw, in the depths of that blackness, a small, round face whose features she could not discern. It was impossibly far away. As she stared the face drifted farther still, shimmering and indiscriminate, as if hiding behind a veil of tears.

Then she pitched headlong down the staircase, a sharp pain lit the base of her skull, and for a few blessed hours she knew nothing at all.

***

When Anne woke, it was somewhere warm and dimly lit that smelled of home. Soft weeping drew her focus to the side of the bed. Dona Estefanía and Dona Theresa were clinging to each other, crying.

“I am not dead,” she said. The dull ache in her head gave an extra sharpness to her words. “Do stop carrying on so.”

“Ana,” whispered Estefania. “Oh Ana. I am sorry. I am so sorry.” She released Theresa to take her lady’s hand in her own, and kiss it.

“I am so sorry.”

There was a sharp ache in her abdomen, and a heavy emptiness that had not been there before.

Anne had time only to note that the second abyss was much blacker than the first. Then it was all around her, and she half hoped that she might never need to leave.

***

When they brought him the news, Louis wasn’t sure he’d heard it right. He made them repeat it to him three times.

He saw in their faces they thought he was an idiot. That he didn’t understand their words. Well, all right, they could think that. He didn’t care. But only, he wanted to hear it again, because somehow he felt if he heard it enough, it would stop making sense.

And if it didn’t make sense, it couldn’t be true.

But it didn’t work like that in the end. They just kept saying it, and then saying he must go to his bride, until at last he stopped trying to make it not true and went instead to help Anne through the terrible truth of it.

She was lying in bed when he found her, attended very rightly and thoroughly by French and Spanish ladies, who retired to a discreet distance at his arrival.

His wife was a study in white and gold. If angels laid in beds, tucked beneath counterpanes, he might have mistaken her for one of them. Her cheeks were waxen, as pale as the lacy night rail she wore. The rich, curling gold of her hair was echoed in the splendid threads that ran through the white silk of her counterpane. She looked too perfect, too clean, to be real.

Louis focused very hard on the threads of the counterpane as he fidgeted by her bedside. Anything to avoid looking at the agony writ in her face, or the green and purple knot on the side of her head, only partly covered by a careful combing-over of curls.

“They—they say you fell,” he said, still staring at a spot on the bed much lower than her face.

“Yes,” said Anne.

“You were running. You and Marie de Rohan were running. And you fell.”

“Yes,” said Anne. This time it was barely more than a whisper.

“You—you shouldn’t have been running, should you?”

“No,” she said, but this time it was so faint, he had to look at her face to make sure he hadn’t imagined it. The grief he saw there instantly shattered any thought he might have had of scolding or questioning.

“You—but you’re going to be all right, aren’t you? They said—I mean, the—the physician says you will be all right. In the end.”

“Yes. I think—oh!” she put her hand to her head.

“Anne?” he pressed close to the bed, frightened. “Anne, what is it?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It’s just a pain, here.” And she touched her temple to show him.

“Is it a toothache?” Louis asked, deeply troubled at the thought. “I had a toothache once, you know, when I was a boy. They gave me a foul mix of vinegar and rose leaves to cure it. I shouldn’t recommend having a toothache if you can avoid it.”

Anne smiled at him, sweet and sad, from the depths of her pillows.

“No my love,” she sighed, “it is not toothache.”

“Well, good,” he said. “It—it would be the utter limit, wouldn’t it, having . . . having toothache on top of losing . . . that is, being . . .”

He broke off as a sharp sob escaped his wife, and she pressed her free hand to her face in a futile effort to stem the flood of tears.

“Anne—Anne, I am so . . . I shouldn’t—that is, it was thoughtless . . . my dear, my dear, please don’t cry.”

But she could not stop, and presently the King, finding his own cheeks were streaked with tears, gave up trying to comfort her and wept with her instead.

***

Marie de Rohan was in Queen Anne’s private cabinet when the King of France stormed in. He crossed the polished floor in six quick, angry strides and came to a halt in front of her.

He _quivered_ , desperately, from the top of his plumed hat to the tips of his exquisitely polished feet. He quivered and shook so badly, it almost seemed he was seizing in front of her, rather than seized in the grip of an emotion so powerful that it was all he could do to hold himself upright before her.

“ _G-g-g-get out_ ,” he ordered.

And thus was Marie de Rohan banished from court for inciting Her Majesty the Queen of France to boisterous pursuits in the Louvre, and causing her to miscarry her child.

***

With Marie gone from her household, Anne did not even have a confidante that she could tell she was resolved to give up watch-keeping forever. Watching-keeping had cost her a friend and her child. She was not about to see what it would take from her next.

Further to that, she was becoming ever more painfully aware of the subtle watch being kept on _her_. As Jean Armand du Plessis increased in power and consequence, as he became the Cardinal Richelieu of influence who gained such sway over King Louis, Anne saw too late that her private games with Marie had allowed her to overlook the more grown-up machinations of the wider court.

Anne could not forget the words she had overheard behind the chamber door. Could not find an innocent explanation for why an Englishman might think he could buy a service from Cardinal Richelieu, unless Cardinal Richelieu was in the business of selling services to Englishmen.

Which would make Cardinal Richelieu a spy, and anyone who worked for him a spy twice over.

When Cardinal Richelieu called her into his chamber and told her he had found her next _dame d’atour,_ Anne did not mistake the gesture for goodwill. She knew exactly what role Constance Bonacieux was expected to play in her household, and it had little to do with keeping her gowns in order.

Watch-keeping was no longer a game for children, if in fact it had ever been. Watch-keeping was a grown-up pursuit, and it was only fun if you were the one keeping watch.

It was markedly less fun when the watch was being kept on you.


	2. The Great Game

_France, 1624_

***

King Louis was worried.

Today he had tried green, and he thought it didn’t work as well for him as he had been promised. To be sure his men had been most reassuring, very supportive, very confident about the experiment. But still, he wondered.

Not that he thought the fellows would actually _lie_ to him, of course, no, how rude it would be to think that of them. Only maybe, perhaps, when a fellow was a King, he didn’t always get exactly the kind of straight answer an ordinary chap on the street could get when he asked “does this ostrich plume work with this coat?”

Ordinary man on the street. That’s what he needed. Or, needed to be. Maybe it was what he needed to find _and_ needed to be.

“Though I’d have better luck finding one than becoming one,” he decided, “so I should try that first.”

It was with this goal in mind that King Louis wandered into the garden, because he had some notion that ordinary men might spend a lot of time working in the garden. And he thought gardeners might be predisposed to like green.

Before he could find a gardener, King Louis found his Queen. His wife was standing in the garden with her ladies. She seemed to be conversing with Cardinal Richelieu. The Cardinal was accompanied by a few of his guards and a fair-haired girl who was—Louis started, squinted across the distance, and beamed—wearing _green._ Oh what luck.

The gardener forgotten, King Louis quickly altered course and hurried over just in time to hear the tail end of some sort of introduction or other.

“Welcome, Mme Bonacieux,” said Anne. “I am very pleased to know you.”

The silver prettiness of her voice gave Louis the most unaccountable shivers, as usual, and he stopped to give his arms a little shake. By the time he’d worked off the gooseflesh, the girl in green was dropping into a beautiful curtsy at Anne’s feet and pressing the Queen’s hand to her lips. It was a damnably pretty picture, and gave the King such an overflowing sense of goodwill that he closed the gap between them at double his previous clip.

“Well—oh, yes,” he paused as his presence registered, and everyone dropped into a bow as deep as that of the girl in green. “Yes, good morning. Uh, my dear,” he gave a half-sideways nod to Anne, then stole a longer look at her to see how she was receiving his interruption. Her expression was of polite expectation, which was not as warm as he’d have liked, but still receptive enough that he ploughed quickly on.

“Well, this is a happy little party, I think? Anne? Cardinal? Miss—eh—er?”

“This is Madame Constance Bonacieux, your Majesty,” supplied the Cardinal. “The newest member of her Majesty’s household.”

“Oh! Lady in—oh, well that’s very nice, eh? And such a well-dressed girl, too,” Louis smiled encouragingly at Constance, then his wife. “Mme Bonacieux is very well dressed, don’t you think my dear?”

Anne smiled gently.

“Yes indeed. Green is a fine colour.”

 _A fine colour_. Louis’s chest swelled with happiness. Yes! Of course it was! One of the finest colours, green. How could he have doubted? Anne put it so plainly, so clearly. She was marvellous, his wife. Green was a very fine colour indeed, and Louis now felt confident that he looked fine wearing it.

“Well!” he said. “Well, this _is_ wonderful. Welcome to you, Mme Bonacieux, and settle in, and all that, and get to like us.”

Mme Bonacieux may have made a polite reply, but Louis was too buoyed by his wife’s assurance to hear. He said something nice to the Cardinal, ignored whatever it was the Cardinal said about a meeting he’d missed—clever man, the Cardinal, very good for advice and such, but he did _scold_ a fellow so—and hurried away before he could be obliged to reschedule.

Green was a fine colour. The day was looking brighter already.

***

“It seems His Majesty approves our new addition,” said Richelieu. The self-satisfaction of his smile was enough to turn Anne’s stomach. She smiled tightly and was about to force a reply through clenched teeth when one of the guards—the girl’s uncle, Jussac—arrested her attention.

He had his hand on Constance’s shoulder, holding her in place while he leaned in to speak. Constance stood perfectly still, eyes downcast. At first glance Anne took her posture for pure deference: a respectful ward accepting last-minute remonstrations from a guardian who was anxious she not disappoint. But on closer inspection she saw Constance’s hands clutching her skirts, the knuckles white. Her upper lip was tucked between her teeth as if to ward off an inclination to tremble.

The girl was frightened. And she was alone.

Well, that wouldn’t do at all. Anne turned her shoulder to the Cardinal and gave the whole of her attention to her new lady.

“Mme Bonacieux,” she said, “would you come here?”

Constance seemed only too pleased to answer the summons. Her uncle was obliged to lower his hand and watch her go, his expression more surly than proud. It was certainly not an appropriate look for any gentleman to direct at the Queen’s lady in the Queen’s presence.

In the time it took Constance to reach her new mistress, Anne, seized by who knew what impulse, discarded every opinion she had already formed of the girl and resolved to learn her from scratch.

“Let us leave these men to their offices, and have a little walk together. I should like to know you better.”

Then Anne dismissed the Cardinal with a sunnier smile than Richelieu had earned from her in years and drew Constance away down the path. The rest of her ladies fell in step behind them.

“First of all I must echo the King’s sentiment,” said Anne, “and tell you I hope you will like it here.”

“Your Majesty is very kind. I’m sure I will.”

“Do not do me so much credit yet, if you please. I think it only be fair to tell you that you have got this post at Cardinal Richelieu’s instruction. As it pleases His Majesty to take the Cardinal’s advice in this matter, I am obliged to accept.”

Constance, expression unaltered, murmured “I believe it is the way in Royal households, is it not?”

“Some of them,” said Anne. She thought, suddenly, of warm homes filled with Spanish sun, and siblings who had played watch-keeping all over the palace. There had been visits to convents, sport with a crossbow, and a queen and king who loved her.

That king had not been ruled by a Cardinal. If reports of his younger life were true, he had actually cast off the machinations of his court and fallen deeply in love with his bride. He had never given her cause to doubt his affection.

Anne set her teeth and denounced the urge to miss them as an unworthy betrayal of her new home and place. The necessity of denying her heart’s desire, however, lent a particular edge to her next words.

“Let us dispense with a few points. You are the Cardinal’s choice for my chamber, and from experience I know _exactly_ what he means for you to do while you hold this position. Now I must ask: do you?”

Constance did not reply immediately, though whether her silence was due to shame or prudent caution, Anne could not judge. They walked in silence some half-dozen paces before Mme Bonacieux answered.

“I know what he intended it to mean. My uncle told me I am to keep watch.”

The familiar childhood term, though phrased in different language than Anne was accustomed to hearing it, gave her a jolt.

“Keep watch. Over me.”

“Yes, your Majesty.”

“You were told to keep watch over me by your uncle of the Cardinal’s guard.”

“Yes.”

“Mme Bonacieux, if I am inclined to doubt your loyalty to me, surely you can see why.”

Constance nodded, but did not look especially troubled. She did not, Anne thought, look especially _anything._ The girl was a cipher.

“You will not protest fealty?” Anne wondered. “Swear yourself? Beg my favour?”

 _Now_ Constance looked uncomfortable. Anne supposed that could be put down to good taste. Being asked to swear something, beg for anything, was enough to discomfit almost anyone.

“I will swear my oath of office, of course, and I will uphold it. But I can hardly ask your Majesty to believe me loyal on first meeting. I only hope for time in which to prove myself.”

Anne frowned. “Your answer is maddeningly rational.”

This observation did not seem to disturb Constance. Anne wondered exactly what was going on behind that vexingly neutral expression, and was spurred to say as much. “Upon my word Mme Bonacieux, you betray very little.”

“A quality which I trust Your Majesty will prize, when the secrets which are mine to betray were first your own.”

From the Cardinal, it would have been a threat. From his spy it should have seemed the same, but somehow, from Constance, it was almost humour. Indeed, Anne actually laughed.

“Very well. I will take you at your word. It is true that all you have said may be artifice, that His Eminence himself coached you to approach me this way, but I will leave it to time to prove you false.”

“If time does not perjure itself, Madam, you will find me more than vindicated. On this, you have my word.”

***

Constance did not give her word lightly. In fact, when it came to volunteering anything, be it a solemn vow or even the most trivial information about herself, compared to the other ladies of the chamber Constance was markedly closed off.

Anne was slow to wake to this fact simply because in conversation with the Queen, Constance was always scrupulously succinct, if tactful. She answered direct questions with every appearance of frankness, so it took Anne rather a long time to realise that she knew almost nothing truly personal about the girl. Her background and family had all been described on request, but nothing was ever volunteered.

Anne might have gone much longer knowing nothing specific of Constance’s family at all, had she not interrupted a family quarrel almost a year after the girl joined her household. Anne was on the verge of entering what she thought was an empty chamber when, from within, she overheard the tail end of a threat.

“. . . a fine purse if you succeed, but I’d think the punishment for failure sufficient to make you work at no cost.”

On hearing those words, Anne knew at once what sort of discussion she was about to interrupt. Members of the Queen’s household were always considered desirable friends. Positioned as they were to learn of court vacancies and opportunities well in advance of these being made public, the ladies were often presented with tokens, presents and even promises of money if only they would commit to putting in a good word or listening for the right opportunity to come up.

Constance, as Lady-in-waiting, must have tolerated this treatment almost from the day she joined the household, yet Anne did not have opportunity to witness it for herself until that moment she rounded the corner and found Mme Bonacieux backed into the elaborate panelling of the salon. A man with broad shoulders and a thick neck, his yellow hair pulled back in a queue, had pressed her there. He did not have hands on her, but that was all the credit Anne could give him.

The whole of Constance’s attention was on him; she did not acknowledge her lady until Anne cleared her throat sharply, and the blonde man jerked around, revealing the emblem of the Cardinal’s guard emblazoned on his jacket. His face was familiar, and his connection to Constance was recalled within a moment’s search of her memory. This would be Jussac, the uncle.

Anne’s eyes narrowed.

“If there can be an explanation for your conduct toward Mme Bonacieux, I would hear it now, or I shall summon the Swiss Guard to beat it from you.”

“Your Majesty.” He bowed. “A small family matter, long overdue for discussion. My apologies if I have kept her from her duties.”

“You need detain her no longer,” Anne said crisply. “Nor importune her in any way in the future. Leave us.”

Jussac cleared his throat and hurried from the room. Constance did not move from her position against the wall until he disappeared from sight; only then did her shoulders slump, her rigid posture dissolving into tremors. Anne took two steps forward, then stopped. She was so unaccustomed to seeing Constance undone, she feared touching her would break her altogether. Instead she spoke from a safe distance, giving the girl space to collect herself.

“Did he hurt you? If he did you injury, I swear he will atone for it.”

Constance shook her head. “He has not struck me since I was a child. He may be dull-witted but he has an instinct for self-preservation.”

“It is as well for him that he does. What did he want?”

Constance looked as miserable as Anne had ever seen her. “I think your Majesty may guess.”

Anne sighed. Constance may not have been willing to spy, but that didn’t mean her spymasters would not expect her to. Anne reproached herself for not anticipating this day.

“I see. Very well; if you feel equal to it, I think we had better repair to some more private quarter, if you’re to give a full account of the meeting.”

A private quarter is a tricky thing for a Queen to come by, but Anne accomplished it by sending her most inquisitive ladies on errands to far corners of the palace and banishing the rest from her salon. There she arranged Constance on a chair and bade her begin when she was ready.

“It is as much as I am sure your Majesty could guess. He reminded me that I was put in this position to gather intelligence of your activities—your conduct, your correspondence and conversation, and any other personal affairs which might suggest conspiracy against Cardinal Richelieu, or otherwise give His Eminence leverage against you.

“He says I have made no satisfactory report in the year that I have been with you, and that if I do not remedy that and increase his standing with his Captain, I will be sent away. He says a spy who cannot gather intelligence is of no use to her spymasters, and the Cardinal will have me replaced with another who is more conscious of the honour he does her.”

The threat, though no doubt mostly bluster, did carry some weight. Anne did not pretend otherwise. If it were put to the Cardinal in just the right way, he would no doubt see great profit in replacing Constance with a more malleable asset.

She sat back in her seat, and stared fixedly out the window.

“So,” she said, “if it is intelligence he demands, let us give it to him.”

“Your Majesty I cannot ask you—”

“You did not ask. I offer this as a price gladly paid for the chance to keep you close.”

“But what can I possibly offer him that will satisfy the Cardinal without actually giving him ammunition to use against you?”

The corner of Anne’s mouth curled delicately.

“Leave that to me.”

***

The story was . . . improbable. To say the least. That was Constance’s greatest reservation about the entire thing. But Anne insisted it was exactly right, and she was the queen, so at last, with Anne concealing herself behind a curtain, Constance invited her uncle to the queen’s cabinet and made her report.

“Walks in her sleep?” Jussac echoed.

“At least twice every month,” Constance said earnestly. “She conducts herself as though she were yet awake, but she is insensible of our efforts to rouse her. Truly, we can never guess what she will do next. Why, just last night she danced with a broom and tried to kiss the cat!”

Jussac blinked. His niece looked up steadily into his face, her expression never altering. At last he seemed to decide he would accept her story. With a grunt that might have been “well done” he took his leave.

Anne emerged from behind her curtain just in time to see Constance’s solemn expression dissolve into mirth.

“Did you see his face?” Constance gasped, then covered the lower part of her own to stifle giggles. Anne, more composed, smiled sunnily and bounced on the tips of her toes.

“False intelligence is a useful technique for spying,” she said. “I had not thought it would also be so droll.”

“Oh,” Constance sighed, “oh if I could have confounded him so thoroughly three years ago, I might have avoided Bonacieux entirely.”

“Three years ago you did not have the protection of your office. I think three years ago, you had only the wit to confound him. Today you have both wit and means. It is a good progression.”

Then, in a rare quiver of uncertainty, she added, “. . . is it not?”

Constance smiled and assured her, at once, that it was the most desirable of any progression.

“I am glad to be here, though I am sorry to have got my position in this manner. If there were some way I could have come straight to you from the convent, I should have liked that better.”

“Was Bonacieux truly so terrible, then?” Anne wondered. She knew Constance had been married, of course, but the dead husband was one of those subjects for which information was never volunteered. Today, with her uncle routed and her humour high, Constance was almost voluble.

“He was not terrible. Not at first. But he was not much anything else. He was not resolute, nor principled, or even charitable. He had no virtues to guard against the acquisition of vice. So when he found gambling, there was nothing to moderate him.”

“He was not a skilled player, I take it?”

“Terrible,” said Constance, almost cheerfully. “He lost all his own money, and then all money of mine which was his to command. He lost money he did not even have, and then, when his debts began to overwhelm him, he turned to drink.”

“A most decided descent.”

“It might not have been so sudden or absolute in a man of firmer character. But Bonacieux was soft, and he unravelled quickly. Then the people who wished to collect on their debts became threatening, not only of Bonacieux, but of me as well. They would not have balked at exacting retribution on us both.”

“How did you prevent it coming to pass?”

Constance, her face a mask of tranquility, said “by great good fortune, shortly after the threats were issued, Bonacieux died. A stomach ailment of some sort. With him gone, there was little point in making an example of me, after that. So his creditors left me alone.”

“His death was almost fortuitous, then,” Anne reflected. “Though perhaps I should not say so.”

“Not at all, your Majesty,” Constance smiled. “Fortuitous is an excellent word. His death was exactly that.”

***

It became routine that whenever Jussac grew impatient to advance, and pressed Constance to betray more information, she would draw half-truths and subterfuge from a list she and Anne had worked together to concoct. Usually the story was not quite as ridiculous as dancing with the broom, but a few of them did strain the bounds of credulity. Fortunately for the queen and her lady, Jussac’s impatience for promotion stifled any ability for critical thought he might once have possessed. He carried the tales, unquestioning, and even if Cardinal Richelieu was more inclined to question them than his subordinate, Constance did not learn of it from her uncle.

This routine, and all other routines, were shattered by the arrival of the Venetian ambassador. The man by himself was not occasion for alarm, but at a dinner given in his honour, when asked to describe the mysteries and wonders of his homeland, he arrested the attention of the Queen with a few particular words.

“—and of course, the vault of Leonardo da Vinci!”

Anne’s hand hovered over her plate.

“A vault?” King Louis looked torn between piqued interest and excruciating boredom. “What treasure does it hold?”

“Any number of our nation’s most precious resources,” the ambassador boasted. “Knowledge of the past, great scientific treatises and speculations—”

“What’s a scientific speculation?” Louis wondered.

“As your Majesty must know, Leonardo da Vinci was a gifted inventor. Some of his plans are still secreted within the vault. Designs for cities, transportation innovations—”

“And war machines?”

This unexpected contribution from so demure and dainty a person as the Queen of France took the ambassador by surprise, but he quickly rallied.

“Why yes, your Majesty, no doubt. I have not seen these for myself, of course. The secrets of the vault are safely locked away even from most Venetians.”

“As, no doubt, is right and proper,” observed Cardinal Richelieu. “After all, such powerful treasures would be badly managed in lesser hands.”

“Oh, quite so,” the Venetian ambassador agreed.

“To able management,” the Cardinal said, and lifted his glass. “And the cunning that is required for good government.”

Every glass was raised, and they drank to the toast. Anne drank deeper and longer than the rest: she suspected she would require the fortification, given the plan that was already taking shape.

***

When Anne first explained her scheme, Constance did not like it. She phrased her dislike as diplomatically as possible, but she did not pretend it was other than what it was. Anne, appreciative of her lady’s honesty and scrupulously careful not to actually issue her a command, resorted to a quantity of wheedling mixed with reason.

“Come now. We have spread false intelligence before; you are quite an adept! What’s to stop us gathering intelligence now?”

“But—that was my uncle. My uncle is nobody. This is an ambassador.”

“Is it the affront to his station or a lack of confidence in your own ability that gives you pause?”

“Neither. But my uncle is a fool and a tyrant, who deserves to fail in his endeavour to use me against you. The ambassador has not wronged us, has he? And consider the magnitude of the consequence should we meet with failure.”

“Perhaps you should focus better on the possibility that the war machine of which Buckingham spoke is accessible through this man. The ambassador himself may be of little danger to anyone, but there are spies who do not confine their spying to the ballroom and the salon, and the consequences of their dealings are lives counted in the thousands.”

“Does your Majesty truly anticipate war waged by this machine?”

“If men have been speaking of this machine for the past ten years, then you may rely on its being built eventually. If it must come to pass, I would prefer it be built by those I love and who have my loyalty. I am afraid that even now we may be too late, for ten years is a long time, and much may be got in that span by men of means.”

“Such as this Duke of Buckingham.”

“Buckingham, yes, and Richelieu also. I will not _command_ your obedience, Constance. I only ask if you will join me in this.”

“In what?” Constance asked sharply. “On top of spying on the Venetian ambassador, does your Majesty also propose that we travel to Venice? That we find this impregnable vault for ourselves, and burgle it?”

“Don’t be absurd,” said Anne. “I propose we find people who can do that for us.”

***

Musketeers are not, of course, the traditional choice for spying. Theirs is an overt style of combat, and spying is anything but. But Anne was firm on the point of who they should ask, insisting that these men were loyal to the cause of France above all else, so Constance bore a message to the three men whose names the Queen gave her.

The Musketeers lived together, which was convenient from the viewpoint of a messenger.  Their servant received Constance immediately, though he seemed woefully unsure of what to do with her once he’d got her inside. He hemmed and hawed and finally begged her pardon for having to excuse himself to summon his masters.

Constance stood in the middle of the floor, cloak drawn tight around her, and listened to footsteps move overhead. The servant’s, light and scuffling, led the way back down, followed by heavier booted strides. The stairs creaked and groaned under their descent.

“My lady,” said the servant, “may I present my masters, Messrs. Athos, Porthos and Aramis, the King’s Musketeers. Sirs, I have the honour of presenting Madame Constance Bonacieux, _dame d’atour_ to her Majesty, the Queen of France.”

Constance bobbed a perfunctory curtsy, and the three men offered various half-hearted postures of obeisance. The social graces observed, the Musketeers got directly to the point.

“So you’re from the Queen, are you?” The first one, Athos, lean and bearded, with hooded eyes and the look of a man who finds life unpleasant, studied her openly. “I suppose you’ve proof of this claim.”

“Proof can be got, if you will consent to listen,” Constance promised. “Should you be willing to do as her Majesty proposes, she in turn will arrange to give guarantee of her involvement.”

“Her involvement—and the king’s?” This was Aramis. He was lean as well, but darker, and sharp-looking. His entire posture was one of a person who holds himself in exquisite check at all times. Constance, who gravitated naturally toward self-control, faced him more directly than she had Athos.

“The king knows nothing of this.”

An undercurrent of unease rippled through the room. Constance felt it, judged its cause, and rushed to stem the tide.

“The means and circumstances under which Her Majesty came by this information do not allow for full disclosure to His Majesty. She is grieved by that fact, of course, but she judges it better to presume upon your loyalty to France than to risk the weight and import of her message being lost to the confusion and concern of the king.”

“Hrm,” said Athos. “Loyalty to France, is it? Because Planchet, here,” he indicated the servant, “said something about a trip to Venice.”

 “Yes, if you accept the commission, it would require travel to Venice.”

“Venice is currently at bitter odds with Spain. Her Majesty is Spanish by birth. Are you asking us to believe that this is not, in fact, some scheme allowing the Queen to help her brother, the Spanish King, by using French musketeers to strike at the Venetians? Because I would take that very ill, if it were the case.”

Constance, holding herself even more exquisitely in check than Aramis, put her chin up just a fraction.

“Her Majesty does not act on behalf of Spain in this matter. I give you my word.”

Porthos laughed. “Lady, your word may be worth something elsewhere, but here it is of little value.”

“The worth of my word does not change,” Constance retorted. “Only men’s appraisal of it does. If you are too dull to appraise my word correctly, what is that to me other than proof that you are not the men for this job?”

Porthos reared back in surprise. Athos looked almost like he might smile, and Aramis seemed intrigued by this philosophical problem of projected value.

“A curious response,” he said, almost to himself.

“A convent upbringing gives rise to many such,” said Constance. “You should hear me hold forth on the subject of a rich dessert; I am wildly unpopular with the pastry chef. Now tell me: would you hear more of this commission, or must I seek more valiant people with better judgment to prevent the coming destruction?”

The three men exchanged another look. Constance, who frequently engaged in similar unspoken communication with Queen Anne and the other ladies in any number of situations where open speech would be imprudent, waited patiently.

“Venice, you say,” murmured Athos.

“Venice,” Constance confirmed. “And it all starts with the Venetian ambassador. Her Majesty has taken the liberty of suggesting a few means by which you may approach him, though the final details, of course, she leaves to you.” She drew a list from her sleeve, and set it on the table. “Shall we begin?”

The interview lasted an hour. At its conclusion Constance returned to Saint Germain. Anne turned around the moment she entered, and tried to look as if she had not been pacing.

“Well?” she said. “What news?”

Constance smiled.

***

The mission was a failure. The particulars of the incident were not revealed to Constance or Anne in any great detail, but Porthos, who’d clearly had a drink or ten to fortify him before the meeting, bellowed something about traitorous bitches and maniacal fops, so the ladies were given to understand that some element of betrayal had been visited on their agents.

Aramis, less inclined to inebriation, was able to give one more detail that put the matter in sharp relief for Anne:

“I am afraid, your Majesty, that the Duke of Buckingham now holds the plans for the war machine.”

“Oh God,” Anne said. “Oh God save us.”

Aramis bowed his head, though whether in prayerful agreement or out of deference to this panicked reverence was difficult to say. It fell to Constance to dismiss the three; to Constance, the task of facing the Queen, and asking what they were to do now.

“God help me,” sighed the Queen, “if I only knew.”

***

Their involvement with the airships might easily have ended there, leaving them to wonder, until it was far too late, what had become of the plans. But some few months following the initial failure Constance returned from an afternoon with her uncle to report a conversation she had overheard.

Jussac and his Captain, an unlikeable man named Rochefort, had not realised she was within earshot when they conferred, so they had been quite unguarded in their speech. As Constance dressed Anne’s hair for bed, she explained all she had heard.

“They spoke of progress in construction, and delays that worried them. They also discussed the task of silencing workers who could betray them—housekeeping, they called it. There was definite mention of a balloon reservoir, and a supply of oil for a flight mechanism.”

Anne’s stomach seized.

“The airship. They are building an airship.”

“I am afraid so.”

“Then . . .” Anne quickly charted the likeliest path of events. “If Buckingham got the plans, and now Captain Rochefort uses the plans—we can assume they are the same plans, for simplicity’s sake—what can this mean but that Rochefort’s puppet master is in league with Buckingham?”

“You think the Cardinal conspires with England? With—with Protestants?”

“Your staunch Catholicism is a great credit to you I am sure,” Anne smiled faintly. “I believe Buckingham will conspire with any who offer him the opportunity to wrest greater control from those who hold it over him. An airship—the ability to fly over any battlefield, to strike at will—is certainly one such means of wresting control. I can easily imagine him colluding with anyone for such a prize.”

“Then what can we do?” Constance wondered.

Anne stared into the glass with the vacant expression of one seeing something much farther off.

“I am not sure. I see too many avenues of destruction. I am afraid for all of us. But . . . God has given me Louis and France. Pray now he will give me wit and fortitude to defend them both.” Then she lifted her gaze to that of Constance, and snapped back into sharp focus.

“The airship. Let us focus on that. He cannot mean it for good, but what can its _precise_ purpose be?”

“Espionage, perhaps? Surveillance?”

Anne tapped her fingertip on the table, frowning. “Yes, possibly . . . it might serve for the ferrying of spies, though it seems a too-obvious means of transport. Difficult to hide, and I can’t think they could evade pursuit easily. Why, one well-aimed rocket and the whole thing comes down in flames.

“We must investigate this further. Constance, can you handle it? I would send Estefanía, but her knees are bad and she sickens looking down from the balcony. I don’t think an airship would be her best battleground.”

“That’s assuming we can even find it.”

“Well,” said Anne, “we know who knows where it can be found. All that remains is for you to attach yourself to him and follow him until he leads you to it.”

“Ah!” said Constance. “Simplicity itself.”

“Impertinent girl!” scolded Anne. “Don’t mock your queen.”

But the effect of the scolding was rather spoiled by her smile.

***

Constance didn’t mind surveillance in general. It meant a lot of walking, certainly, but it also meant a lot of hiding, and a lot of pretending to be someone doing something that you were not. Constance, especially adept at concealing herself, took to it at once.

Unfortunately, surveillance does not always yield results immediately, or even, sometimes, ever. Months dragged by as Constance dogged the heels of her uncle and his Captain. She bore witness to myriad petty treasons and great brutality on the part of both—more than she had even suspected Jussac could contrive, and which put to rest at last any lingering familial loyalty she might once have believed she bore him. He robbed peddlers of their coins, scattered their wares in the street with his boot and then amused himself by watching them scramble to collect it all.

His Captain was even worse, and on many occasions it was all Constance could do to drag herself back to the Louvre, whisper the atrocities she had seen then commit, conclude with the news that she had learned nothing relevant to their cause, and sink to the ground beside Anne’s chair to be reassured, once more, that their cause was worth letting pass the smaller barbarisms in pursuit of something far worse.

Constance wanted to believe it. But she had not held many ideals to begin with, and this particular exercise seemed the surest way to dash what few she yet held, until all that remained was a kind of heavy desperation and a bedrock of loyalty to her Queen.

Then, on a clear morning in early April, she put a basket of flowers over her arm and followed her uncle from the palace.

And everything changed.

***

The early chill of spring morning had long since been eclipsed by the warmth of a midday sun when Constance finally returned. Her flowers were wilted, her hair in disarray, and her face was the studied mask of indifference that it always became when Constance had much to conceal.

Madame de Sénécy looked sharply at her as Constance hurried by.

“What is the matter with those flowers?” she asked. “It looks like you picked them hours ago.”

“I’ve been to the market,” Constance said lightly, and kept walking.

“What, for flowers?” Madame de Sénécy hiked up her skirts and chased after her. “That’s absurd, we’ve gardens in abundance right here.”

“Certainly we do,” Constance said cheerfully. “But I find the company to be had greatly improves once I leave this place.” And she pressed through to the Queen’s private apartments, leaving the Lady-of-honour gaping in wordless indignation behind her.

“You’ve been an age!” was the scolding greeting levelled at her by Dona Theresa.

“I know, I know!” Constance tossed the basket into a corner. “Faugh, they smell dead. I do not think they can even be saved for sachets. Next time I won’t use something so perishable as a pretext.”

“Next time? You mean to tell me there must be a ‘next time’? You were gone almost four hours, and you have nothing to report for it? My lady will not be pleased.”

“My lady will understand that this is not a science. Though I think she will rightly call me foolish for using flowers as a cover. If even Madame de Sénécy can see through it, I think it cannot be much of a disguise at all.”

Dona Theresa frowned at this, but made no further remark other than a promise to get rid of the flowers if they could not be salvaged to some purpose or other. Then Constance went to join Anne in her salon, and try though she might to conceal her true feelings, the Queen was not long fooled.

“What are you plotting this morning, Constance?” Anne wondered.

“My lady?”

“You look so solemn and unlike a person that I know there must be something significant in the works. Is it your uncle? You were going to follow him this morning, were you not?”

Constance fiddled with her embroidery, decided she would only stick herself with the needle if she pretended to continue, and put it aside with a smile.

“He was trounced. Thoroughly. I had followed him as far as Cooper’s Yard, which is farther than I’ve been able to keep pace with him before, so I was happy enough about that. But before he could press on, he saw three of His Majesty’s Musketeers about to duel with . . .” she hesitated. “A—a boy. From Gascony.”

Anne traced a forefinger over the bright threads of her own handiwork. A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

“A boy from Gascony?”

Constance lowered her gaze, looking more wooden than ever. Anne laughed, and clapped her hands.

“Wonderful! She is undone. Constance, I never thought to see the day, you are more paragon than person. You can follow your uncle any time; for you, an infatuation is nothing short of a miracle. Tell me of him, this Gascon, and his association with the Musketeers. They were duelling? Against the edicts, of course, but as long as nobody was hurt . . . oh no, were they? I hope he did not come to harm.”

“No. They were about to cross swords but my uncle interfered, and they banded together to defend themselves. I know I should have left before my uncle saw me, but the spectacle was such that I stayed to watch.”

Cheeks pink, Constance detailed the full extent of her uncle’s humiliation at the hands of her Gascon youth. Anne smiled through the tale, enjoying not only the story, but also Constance’s own delight at the chance to relive it.

“He put him down so _completely_. It was exactly . . . oh it was perfect. But,” the bright, clear joy of her face shadowed, “I’m afraid it was also very public. There’s no chance His Eminence won’t hear of it.”

Anne nodded. She looked very fine and remote as she sat back in her chair, as rigidly correct as though it were a chair of state.

“I see,” she said. “And doubtless the King will be buffeted with advice on how best to remedy this situation. Very well, we must be ballast. Have you any notion how ballast should dress?”

“Ma’am,” Constance’s eyes shone. “I know the very gown.”

***

The King’s audience with the Musketeers, which Anne had interrupted without qualm and with every ounce of poise and self-command suited to her station, went not nearly as badly as Constance thought it might. In fact, at one point she almost thought the King looked very grand, undermining the Cardinal in front of everyone and making Anne smile with true pleasure.

It seemed a pity it could not always be that way between them.

Of course, not everyone was of the same mind. As they left the audience, Madame de Sénécy was positively spoiling for a quarrel. Constance tried to consider her perspective; after all, watching the Queen cheek the Cardinal must have put his puppet in a rather awkward position. But it was difficult to be so understanding when Madame de Sénécy opened with a direct thrust.

“He is poor, your Gascon?”

“He is ugly, your Cardinal,” Constance retorted.

She surprised even herself with her words, but she was far from alone in her shock. A direct response to provocation was so out of character for Constance that even the Queen could not let it pass. She stopped midstride and whipped around to stare at both women in open astonishment, and not a little disapproval.

“ _Mesdames_ ,” she said sharply, “if I wished to mediate domestic quarrels, I should staff my household with fishwives and laundresses. Since you have not half their claim to industry, you must have twice their claim to discretion and good manners. Conduct yourselves accordingly.”

“Your Majesty,” both murmured, and dropped mortified curtsies. The procession continued on in uncharacteristic silence.

***

Buckingham did not wear white this time, or pearls, but he did arrive in an airship. It was, in the end, a grander statement than jewellery ever could be.

Constance, watching the shadow fall over the courtyard, understood Anne’s urgency in a real and present way that she had not done before. This device, in even slightly greater numbers, could wreak devastation on all of them. And if her uncle and his captain had access to one . . .

She was suddenly grateful for the protection of her skirts. They hid the way her palms moistened and her hands trembled.

Anne, in contrast, was stern and composed. Her palms were dry, though she wished to make a fist of each hand and rain both down upon Buckingham until he broke under the onslaught. Instead she held herself firmly in check, and waited until Louis had greeted their guest—and had begun to look a little flustered, at least from back view—before she moved to join him.

She had hoped she could retain her composure, but she did not know it for sure until the Englishman greeted her by name.

“Anne,” he said, and at the sound of her name on his lips she felt in her core the empty space where a child had been. And suddenly, she no longer feared losing her nerve.

Louis, of course, was baffled by the familiarity. No formal introduction of Buckingham had ever been made to the Queen, so of course there should be no presumption of acquaintance. For a moment Anne thought perhaps Buckingham only meant to alarm Louis, but then, when she declaimed any recent familiarity, the Englishman looked her right in the eye and said it.

“An evening I shall cherish. Forever.”

The courtyard dipped and reeled around her. He had seen her. Seen her, or heard Marie call her name, or simply made the correct deduction after the fact . . . whatever it was, he knew it had been she at the door.

Knew what her games had cost France.

She was saved the urge to strike him by Louis’s quivering adjournment of that stage of the meeting. The men paused to address the kneeling Musketeers, but Anne did not stay for it. Her part in the proceedings was complete, and it was all she could do not to run from the courtyard.

Constance kept a steady pace behind her, and they were joined on the point of entering the palace by Madame de Sénécy, who had been reluctant to get any closer to the airship than was absolutely necessary.

“A walk, I think,” Anne said faintly. “Just the thing. Fresh air, the gardens . . . it will do us good. The palace suddenly feels very overcrowded.”

***

The palace was not the only place that felt too crowded in those days; even the garden was not immune to interlopers. The day following Buckingham’s arrival, Anne was leading her household toward the pavilion when they were set on by D’Artagnan.

 _Set on_ was, perhaps, a rather dramatic way of putting it—some people might have said “greeted” or, at worst, “pursued”—but for Constance, being pursued by a fellow who was shouting her name in front of everyone felt pretty alarmingly set-upon. Constance liked to go unnoticed, and one eager boy from Gascony was making everyone look at her.

She doubted that the Queen had been obliged to endure even half these indignities during her courtship with the King. Maybe there was something to be said for having ambassadors step in and sort the whole thing out for you.

And the worst of D’Artagnan was, he was so _direct_ , and he obliged _her_ to be direct in turn. He claimed he wanted to speak with her; as if there weren’t a hundred reasons such a thing were impossible! Not that she could even tell him a quarter of them, since “I am far too busy spying on Captain Rochefort and my uncle to see where they hide their war machine to associate with you just now” was, as far as explanations went, quite out of the question.

But even the reasons he should have instinctively understood did not seem apparent to him. She tried to put him off vaguely but there was no evasion to be had. He kept asking and pushing until she gave a straight answer. _Too_ straight. If she had been any more direct she’d have been obliged to push him into a fountain.

When at last Constance had got rid of her persistent hanger-on, and was feeling all the worse for having been required to resort to cruelty to accomplish this, the Queen’s household was able to proceed to the garden pavilion. As they waited for refreshment to be served, Anne, eyes twinkling, brought up the subject of D’Artagnan. Of course she insisted on calling him “ _your_ Gascon” which Constance did not appreciate in the least.

“Naturally I apologise to all present for his delaying us,” Constance murmured, but Anne would not leave the matter there.

“You must have learned more of him since our audience with the King. Gossip travels faster than river currents. People have surely told you things by now. His family, for instance; what of them?”

Constance firmed her lips, but she could see Anne would not be dissuaded.

“It is good enough. His grandfather was a merchant, but ennobled. He uses his mother’s name; hers is a much older line. Her brother is M le Comte d’Artagnan. It’s all very suitable, even if he has no expectation. But . . .”

“Hmm?” Anne’s gaze intensified. Constance, with a mighty huff, smacked her palm on the table.

“It’s _him._ D’Artagnan. You must have seen some of it in him already. I watched him in the yard and I saw the truth of him. He is maddeningly idealistic. All noble, honour and duelling. Crossed swords, open challenges, and the most _painfully_ unsubtle personality I have ever encountered.”

“My goodness,” Anne murmured.

“He is absolutely unlike a real person. He talks like someone from a storybook. All _lines_ and _ideals_ and—and—romance!”

“Shameful.”

“He has _no_ place here, where everything is intrigue and double cross. He belongs on a printed page. There is no subterfuge in him at all. He’s—ridiculous. Impossible.”

“Yes, he sounds perfectly appalling.”

At last the incongruity of Anne’s tranquil tone and mirthful eyes penetrated the haze of Constance’s furor. The girl pursed her lips.

 “Your Majesty is making sport of me.”

“A Queen’s privilege, I’m afraid,” Anne smiled. “Please believe me, I hear your frustration. But there are worse complaints a lady might make of a gentleman than that he is overset with nobility of spirit.”

“In fiction perhaps. But nobility of spirit is a hazard in our world. The men here are not noble. They abide by no code of honour, merely trade in the currency of power and privilege. They will make a meal of him. I do not think I could bear to see it happen.”

“Ah,” said Anne, more softly this time. “You would protect him from the schemes and devices of the ignoble.”

“If I had the power, yes.”

Anne folded her hands quite deliberately in her lap.

“Power is a luxury, not a necessity. If you have the wit and wherewithal to perceive where power lies and to divine the schemes of the powerful in time to prevent them harming you or those you love, you have the means to combat the powerful and ignoble.”

Constance smiled ever so slightly.

“Is that the advice of the Queen of France?”

“It is the advice of the wife of the King of France.”

“Are these women not one and the same?”

“Some day, perhaps.” Anne looked out of the pavilion, across the expanse of greenery to where the King walked with Constance’s maddening idealist from Gascony. “If wit and wherewithal do not desert me.”

Then the food was set before them, and they spoke of other things.

***

It _would_ be Madame de Sénécy who got there first. Prying sneak.

Constance knew it was an unlovely thought, and she felt guilty for entertaining it, but she was already running low on temper and, consequently, charity. She had been called to a meeting with her uncle in one of the Cardinal’s smaller salons and the necessity of reporting always thinned her patience. On top of that it seemed somebody had finally told Jussac that his niece’s reports were not exactly the quality of intelligence they had been hoping for, and he was venting on her his rage at being called to task.

All of that was unnerving enough, but she had barely begun her report when Madame de Sénécy also entered the Cardinal’s apartments, a small packet of paper clutched close to her chest. The door to the antechamber was open just enough that Constance could watch, out of the corner of her eye, as the Lady-of-honour addressed a guard.

“I must speak with his Eminence at once. I’ve . . . found something.”

The Cardinal himself approached a minute later. Constance watched him take the little packet in hand, turning it over.

“It . . .” Madame de Sénécy, brought to the point of betrayal, wavered. “It appears to be private correspondence between Her Majesty and the Duke of Buckingham.”

“Indeed?” the Cardinal murmured, drawing out the last syllable. “How shocking. Did you by any chance peruse this correspondence?”

“No, your Eminence.” Madame de Sénécy appeared shocked by the suggestion. “I brought it directly to you.”

“Yes, yes, quite right . . . still, something like this, I fear I am not the proper person to receive it. I think in this instance it would be more correct for you to take these directly to His Majesty.”

“To—the King?” she said doubtfully.

“Yes, of course the King! It is _his_ wife, _his_ rival—yes, I would take these directly to the King. I would not even bother to mention that you brought them to me first. The King is very sensitive about people interfering in private matters.”

“Well . . . all right,” said the Lady-of-honour, though her uncertainty was palpable even where Constance sat on the other side of the door. Jussac was carrying on, unaware that his niece was no longer even pretending to attend to the lecture. She leaned closer to the door to catch the final exchange.

“When you have delivered this to His Majesty, you may return to collect the usual remuneration. Very well done, Madame.”

“Thank you, your Eminence.”

Constance could picture the uncertain smile on Madame’s face. She had seen it often enough herself—the smile of somebody who appreciates a good word, but is unsure of deserving it. Constance’s hands curled into fists in her lap. She listened to the retreating footsteps and the click of the door. Counted to ten, then ten again.

She rose abruptly. Jussac, mid-tirade, broke off to stare at her in disbelief.

“I’m not finished!”

“Then please,” said Constance, “feel free to continue in my absence.” And she rushed from the room to find the Queen.

It took her all of a breath to tell Anne what she had overheard. Anne clutched her stomach, and Constance wondered if she should put out a steadying hand, just in case. But the Queen did not fall.

“The King will not believe it,” she said. “He cannot.”

But her voice wobbled.

***

At first, nothing happened. The King did not summon or confront her, there were no rumours brought to her attention, and life went on more or less exactly as it had done before. Anne clung to the lack of development as some kind of proof that nothing _would_ develop, even though she knew it proved no such thing.

Then Louis joined her for lunch, barely touched his food, and told her that they should really have a party of some kind, because it had been a while, hadn’t it? Yes, yes, he thought it had. So there should be a celebration. He felt. And didn’t she agree?

Anne reassured him that of course it was a fine idea, and she would be delighted. She even breathed a little easier as she settled in at the dressing table that afternoon, because surely his suggestion meant he had not taken the letters seriously.

She gave Constance instructions concerning her jewellery, as she had done countless times in the past. Constance went to fetch the piece in question, as she and every Lady-in-waiting before her had done countless times in the past.

Then Constance stumbled back into the room, in as close to a thing like panic as Anne had ever seen her.

“Ma’am,” she said, “my lady, it . . .”

She could not finish. Nor did she have to, for Anne leaped from her chair and went to see for herself. When she emerged from behind the fireplace she felt like another person entirely, somebody cut from cold stone and grim resolution.

“Very well,” she said. “At least now we know where we stand.”

She wanted to confront the Cardinal. _Insisted_ on it, as though going toe-to-toe with her enemy had always been the plan and not a decision she made in the heat of the moment, just after she assured Constance that she in no way held her responsible for the theft and just before she whirled on Madame de Sénécy to snap “ _you._ Stay here.”

It went about as well as an interview inspired and driven by the fire of her own rage and terror could be expected to go, but she wanted him to know. Wanted him to see that even if, in the end, he had it all his own way, got France away from Louis and took it all for himself he would not do it unseen or unjudged.

Not that Cardinal Richelieu seemed to have much fear of judgement.

Constance caught her arm as she left the audience with Richelieu. Anne battled down panic long enough to realise that Constance was speaking. She struggled to understand the words.

“. . . and ask them.”

“The—” Anne paused. “Musketeers.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Yes. Yes, all right. It . . . couldn’t hurt.”

Constance’s smile was part sympathy, part hope.

“No,” she agreed, “it could not.”

***

The Musketeers were not nearly as difficult to persuade as Constance had feared they might be. She was obliged to be very direct in her speech, to give all manner of information without waiting to be asked for it, but this was the sort of dire situation where Constance didn’t mind being a little less than herself.

Then D’Artagnan obliged her to kiss him, and somehow she minded even less.

But of course it could not be _that_ easy, and Constance, who had spent months following her uncle and his captain in the hopes they’d lead her to their airship, reproached herself for not guessing that this tactic could work both ways.

Rochefort, Jussac and entirely too many of the Cardinal’s men had followed her.

“Followed _you_?” D’Artagnan stared at her, incredulous. “Why would they follow you?”

“I think we don’t have time for this discussion,” said Constance.

“And I think she’s right,” Athos muttered, trying to steal a peek out the window from an angle that would not betray his position. “We’ve got to leave now if we’re going to leave at all.”

They agreed that a diversion should be arranged through Planchet. The choice might have given everyone reservations, but nobody went so far as to voice them. They did not have enough options that they could afford to criticise the one plan they had.

Constance, who had suffered enough rude surprises for one day, decided this _had_ to succeed simply because so many things had already not. As logic went, it might not have been the soundest, but in the end she was proved correct. They burst from the stables in a thunder of hoof beats, and though musket balls pinged and whined dangerously close, it was mercifully dark, the streets were narrow, and not one struck true.

She firmed her grip around D’Artagnan’s waist, trusted that whatever his mare lacked in form she made up for in function, and settled in for the gruelling ride to Calais.

***

Jussac got there first.

“ _How_?” was the question Porthos put to their group, but he did not seem to expect an answer. Which was odd, because it was a point worthy of consideration.

Constance followed their gaze over her shoulder and saw her uncle flanked by a number of other guards, all of them looking entirely too full of their own menacing might to understand that they were also a painfully obvious trap.

Which did not, of course, make slipping past them any easier.

Still, there was something about the absurdity of the situation which pricked at her, though it did not seem to disturb her travelling companions. Jussac. In Calais. Yes, of course a party bound for England would be bound for Calais, but the question which Porthos had meant as rhetoric plagued her. How _did_ he get there so fast?

The hairs at the nape of her neck stood up.

 _Calais_. They had never considered Calais, but now that she considered the matter, Calais made sense. An airship—well, it was a ship. It would want water eventually, would it not? They could not keep the fires below the balloons burning at all times. Perhaps it was even possible to collapse the balloons, to make them appear the ordinary sort of sail . . . she tried to rein in her racing thoughts, to give them form, direction, and purpose. Think, think, think.

There had got to be a way to make them lead her to it. To see her as no threat at all . . .

Belatedly she registered the debate waging around her. They could not agree on who would draw the guard away. It was the perfect opening.

“Wrong,” she said firmly. “Wrong on all counts.” And she gave them a new plan.

For something she’d concocted off the top of her head, it wasn’t bad. She even flattered herself that it was rather good. D’Artagnan didn’t like it, for it deeply offended his sense of chivalry, but she had little fine feeling over D’Artagnan’s chivalry and she won out in the end.

She donned his hat, his cloak, and mounted his rather charmingly ridiculous-looking mare. She fled and her uncle pursued, his men following close behind.

Beneath the brim of D’Artagnan’s hat, Constance smiled.

***

The most aggravating part of being a Queen in the middle of intrigues, Anne found, was that you could be in the middle of something and still have almost no idea what was happening, even though it was mostly happening because of you.

She sat at her escritoire with pen hanging, inked and unused, from her fingers. A letter begun to her brother sat before her, and she struggled to think how best she could keep her promise to him this time.

For they _had_ corresponded, just as agreed, all through childhood, through his becoming King Philip IV, through the English prince throwing over their sister Maria Anna for the French princess Henriette Marie, her matured efforts at keeping up the watch-keeping game . . . all of it. They had continued to write.

But somehow all of those previous events, which had seemed the most important things in all the world at the time, were nothing next to what was happening now. Because, she saw, this was about her and Louis. It was so much more about her and Louis than any other of the past intrigues had ever been. And somehow, in turn, it being so very much about the two of them made it more about France than any of the other intrigues had been, either.

They _were_ France. Buckingham and Richelieu, in striking at both of them, had struck directly at the heart of France. And in that moment, Anne hated them as much as she had ever hated anyone.

That cold, certain rage finally gave shape to her words. She re-inked her pen.

_Anne of Austria, to Philip IV of Spain_

_A theological question for you, my brother, who number among the most devout men of all my acquaintance. Do you think it can ever be justified to wish for the complete destruction of another? If not, I fear I will be keeping my confessor terribly busy in the days to come . . ._

***

Constance managed to lead her pursuers on for nearly two miles before they overtook her. She could have pressed the horse a bit further, but it seemed pointless when the whole design of her ruse had been not only to serve as decoy, but also to ensure they _did_ catch her.

People who were damnably reluctant to lead a spy to their hidden airship would, she hoped, be far less reluctant to show the location of that same airship to a prisoner.

Of course there was the inconvenience of actually _being_ prisoner, but Constance decided that was something that could be got around in time, if only the Queen’s necklace could be restored. And if it couldn’t . . . but she chose not to complete that thought.

Instead she focused on their means of transport back to Paris. They hustled her back to the dock, and on arrival, despite the situation she felt a quick surge of triumph—she had been right.

The ominous black craft was moored like an ordinary ship, and at first it was treated as such. They boarded in the traditional manner, and sailed it around the point as though it were an ordinary ship. Then, as they put out of sight of the busiest part of the port, the deckhands swarmed up the rigging and released the sails. Burners were lit. The sails rose, and then . . .

Constance, though she had known logically what must happen, gasped all the same. The ship creaked, groaned and, streaming water from the bilges, rose into the air. Most amazingly, the entire process had taken only a little over three hours.

Rochefort watched her step to the rail and look over the side. He laughed.

“Thinking of jumping, Madame? I would not recommend it.”

She pursed her lips and considered feigning a faint, then rejected the idea as more melodramatic than productive. She stepped back from the rail and faced him with wide eyes.

“How do you make a craft like this?” she wondered, tucking her hands behind her back. “I mean to say, it must take remarkable ingenuity.”

“Madame, you flatter the wrong man,” Rochefort chuckled. “The master builder of this craft is beyond your compliments, and certainly is in no position to be swayed by them. We keep him securely imprisoned in the Cardinal’s private cells, that he will not be persuaded to sell the secret of the war machine to any other.”

“Oh I see,” Constance said brightly. “Of course. How clever of you.”

For a moment she thought she’d overdone it—his good eye squinted at her, as if searching for the cause for her magnanimity. She preserved her non-expression, though, and after a moment he seemed to conclude there was no cause for alarm. She was tempted to leave it at that but there was still information she needed to gather—information which could be used should the Queen survive this attempt. And she _would_ survive it. Constance was quite resolved on that point.

“You are perhaps not so _very_ clever though,” she warned. “I mean, even I know that ships must be made from plans. Drawings and things like that. Your master builder could be locked up until the last trump sounds, and it still would not keep the plans safe.”

She was overreaching after all. Rochefort’s squint returned. He leaned in, grabbed her arm and said “just what are you playing at?”

Constance blinked. She said nothing.

“Jussac!” Rochefort called, still staring at her. “I think your niece might be safer below decks for the journey to Paris. Take her. Do not leave her unattended.”

It was at least amusing to see her uncle so thoroughly cowed. Constance enjoyed the sight of his silent acquiescence the whole way down the ladder. Then, as he pushed her into a seat and hovered awkwardly over her, she decided to try again.

“I think your captain must be a fool to think that imprisoning the ship builder is enough to keep the design a secret. I _do_ know about builders’ plans, and how you need them to make things. I can’t be the only one who does.”

“Then perhaps,” said Jussac, “it will satisfy your tender concern for my captain to learn that the plans for this ship are safely concealed in the Cardinal’s personal vault.”

“Oh I see,” Constance said calmly.

“Don’t think yourself half so clever now, do you?” her uncle smirked, and crossed his arms. Constance smiled back.

“No, you are far and away cleverer than I.”

As plans went, it really was almost perfect. The capture was exactly what she had hoped for, and the transport back to Paris was almost comfortable. Floating through the air was certainly less bruising than miles covered on horseback at an unreasonable speed, with only minimal provision made for rest and restoration.

Being presented to the Cardinal as some kind of linchpin in a carefully-formed plan was galling, especially with them being so _theatrical_ about it, and she did not enjoy the Cardinal’s obvious pleasure at the Queen’s imminent downfall coming about in part because of her own Lady-in-waiting, but it was not the indignity that rankled. She could have borne that well enough, since she had after all just learned not only the location of the airship’s builder, but also that of its schematics. She could bear a bit of presentation—even being the _subject_ of presentation—because she had got what she wanted to collect, and anything required for the collection of it was, in the end, part of the plan.

Being hauled back across the Channel as security and makeshift hostage, however, was not.

***

Constance had not yet returned. Anne tried to eat, to go about her day, to behave as though nothing were amiss, but genuine subterfuge—the type of which Constance was so fond—had never come easily to her. She was too inclined to show her true feelings.

At last, when she could bear the pretence no longer, she led her ladies into the palace, bade them all wait for her in the cabinet with whatever amusements best pleased them, and locked herself in her chamber.

The altar she had brought from Spain as a girl was set all around with cushions for just such a time as this. Anne sank to her knees, trembling, and the devotions of her childhood—a childhood spent visiting convents, playing games with aunties who had taken the veil, learning her first prayers at the knees of rigidly devout parents—spilled from her lips.

Heedless of the clocks which marked the hour, Anne prayed. Over and over and over again she spoke the rosary, until the words bled into each other and she half-fancied it was the lifeblood of France which spilled from her mouth.

“Salve, Regina, mater misericordiae; vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, salve . . .”

_“A deal! I go aboard your ship with the diamonds, the girl comes aboard ours. Once I know she’s safe, I give them to you.”_

“Ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle . . .”

_Betrayal. Pursuit._

_“We hide. In there.” Constance, with all the consummate confidence of habitual self-concealment, directed them to the densest part of the cloud, which would allow them to evade detection._

_The Musketeers, out of options, did as they were told._

“Eia ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte . . .”

_A duel to the death on the rooftops. Feet slipping, hands bloodied, steel flashing in the cold, careless fire of a lightning storm._

_A twist—a thrust—a final fall. That was the end of Rochefort._

“O clemens, o pia, o dulcis—”

Anne broke off. Noises beyond the window broke through her reverie—great, booming groans and crashes. There were shouts, screams, and the sound of the sky falling.

She faltered in the litany, struggling to recall the end. Was _this_ the end? Should she go to the window and take some comfort in this having been her home for as long as it had been? If they had failed, it would not be her home much longer.

Then came more screams. Cries for help. The rush of booted feet. But this time, the hubbub was right outside her door.

Anne dove forward and flung open the doors set in the front of the altar, reaching into the depths for what she had hidden there. It was going to take something much more pointed than a rosary to fix this.

***

The ship set down with a bump that jarred Constance off her feet. She crashed to the deck and gasped at the jolt of pain that lanced through both knees.

“Madame?” Athos put out a hand, awkward, obligatory. She squeezed her eyes shut and stole a precious moment to suck down enough air that her head cleared and the pain subsided.

“I’m fine. Please, the diamonds. I have no time to lose.”

“Of course. But allow me to escort you as far as I can. I do not put it past the Cardinal to make an attempt even now.”

“Then you had better distract him,” Constance recommended, “and give me cover of a diversion. Otherwise I have no hope of getting past him to the Queen.”

Athos signalled his agreement to the plan with a curt nod. Constance struggled to her feet and accepted the Queen’s necklace from the King’s musketeer.

She wedged the diamonds down the front of her bodice, cramming them into a reassuringly uncomfortable position. Every breath she took pressed the stones into her flesh, proof of her triumph and her lady’s survival.

The Musketeers went over the side of the craft and advanced, boldly and plainly, down the main promenade. D’Artagnan joined them just before smoke billowed up from the damaged craft and obscured all four from view.

The smoke that blocked her line of sight also served as precious cover. Pressing a sleeve over her mouth and nose, she ducked low and fled the downed ship from the opposite side. Her eyes watered and her nose stung; her lungs protested the dual abuse of exertion and smoke inhalation, but she kept going. One foot in front of the other. Move, move, _move._

To stop moving was to give up. Constance would not give up. It was not within her to do so.

The door she chose was not one she had used before; too out of the way to be used for official business, yet too visible to have been much use for their more covert activities. It was unlocked, and yielded with the ease of well-oiled hinges. The corridor beyond was familiar enough that she knew at once where she was, and how best to reach the Queen’s wing.

She met almost nobody in her flight. The few people she saw were running the other way—outside, toward the mighty creaks and groans of the downed craft.

Her lungs burned and her eyes watered from the after-effects of smoke, but still she kept running. She reached the Queen’s apartments; raised her fist and pounded on the door.

Estefanía greeted her; was about to stand aside to admit her, when her eyes widened, and she cried out.

Constance half-turned, but a hand twisted in her hair and pulled her back before she could fully recognise her pursuer. Screams echoed through the chamber beyond, and she heard the running feet of the Queen’s bodyguard as they rushed to assist, but it was Anne herself, who emerged a few moments later, who identified the man.

“M Jussac,” she said. “I did not like you the last time I found you bothering my lady-in-waiting. I find today I like you even less. Let her go.”

Her hands were hidden in voluminous skirts—a beautiful white damask and cloth-of-gold gown, richly embroidered, and badly unsuited to confrontation. The body guard were trying to draw her back, but Anne shut them up with a wordless hiss.

Constance twisted until she felt the painful tug on her scalp, and her eyes watered anew.

Jussac ignored the Queen’s speech. “Give them to me,” he barked. Constance could not tell if the instruction was meant for her or the Queen; either way, she made no move to fetch the necklace from her bodice.

“I think you will find,” said Anne, “that it is too late for such a melodramatic endeavour. Mme Bonacieux is someone of consequence, far above and beyond her connection to you. I must insist that you release her into my care.”

“Or _what_?” he growled.

Anne, for her answer, drew her hand from the folds of her skirt to reveal an impossibly dainty crossbow, small enough to fit in the hand, loaded with a gleaming, single bolt.

“Or I shall be obliged to put this between your eyes.”

She aimed it with a sunny smile and all the confidence of a tiny Spanish girl who used to pick off apples from the topmost branches of trees.

“A toy!” Jussac declared, deeply unimpressed. Such was the magnitude of his error that Constance could not help herself—she laughed.

The laugh startled him; he had never heard such a sound from her before. He turned, confused, and stared down at her, and in that moment exposed the hand that held her hair.

Anne fired. The bolt struck true. Jussac, his hand pierced, released Constance and howled. Anne smiled.

“Oh I _am_ sorry; I misspoke. If you move again, it is _this_ one I shall put between your eyes.” She raised her other hand, revealing a second such toy.

This time Jussac did not scorn her ability. He did as ordered and sank to his knees, but of course—Constance scorned him privately—he could not restrain himself from making a final threat.

“It’s not over. We have the plans. _Buckingham_ has the plans. He will crush your boy-King, and a true leader will emerge from the chaos.”

“I have found,” Anne said, almost pleasantly, “that very little emerges from chaos save further chaos. And, typically, great destruction.”

She held the crossbow on him, still smiling sweetly.

“I will not see my home destroyed, M Jussac. And I will see you dead before I let you set against my king.”

And in that posture she, Constance and Estefanía remained as the body guard swarmed forward to surround Jussac and take him off their hands for good.

***

That was not the end of it, of course. That would have been too simple—dancing with the King, proof of her fidelity and, though none save her household could know it, proof of her own ingenuity worn proudly around her neck.

No, Buckingham was still a force to contend with, and when the report was brought to the Queen and her household, as they sat together in cabinet as far removed from the thing as anyone could wish, that the English warships—air and sea alike—were advancing on La Rochelle, Anne felt a kind of fatalism about the whole thing.

The diamonds had been life or death for her alone. The theft and retrieval of the necklace had been nothing more than a prelude to the real thing. A chance to practice, to see that they _could_ do such things, so that now, when they needed to do many more such things . . . they would know they could.

Five years ago—no, even five months ago—Anne would not have considered that it would be possible. Her ladies were splendid, certainly, but their exercises had so long been limited to domestic intrigues that she felt it was pardonable she had begun to see that as their exclusive sphere.

But Constance had engineered a rescue mission to England and brought back a literal Queen’s ransom in diamonds. Certainly she’d had considerable help, but if you took the thing at face value, she shouldn’t have been able to do it at all.

They were _wonderful_ , her ladies. Even the ones who were scheming and spying for the Cardinal: just because you couldn’t trust a person, didn’t mean you couldn’t admire her. And surely spying for the Cardinal didn’t preclude doing a bit of fetch-and-carry for the whole of France. Not if you told them it would be treason to refuse.

Queen Anne straightened her spine.

“Constance.” Her tone was clear; sharp. Constance at once sat to attention, back straight, skirts fluted beautifully around her, that peculiar combination of soldier and damsel that could never be reconciled yet fit better than any other persona Anne could imagine for her.

“Ma’am?”

“What would you say are the principal enemies of an army?”

“Discounting the opposing forces?”

“Not wholly, but yes, let us restrict ourselves to other factors.”

Constance put her head to the side and began to tick points off on her fingers. “Disease, I suppose . . . the appointment of poor strategists, or the loss of good ones. Hunger. Thirst. Fatigue.”

“Are we in a position to inflict any of these on Buckingham’s army?”

“Alone, I think not. But with the help of intermediaries . . .”

“The Musketeers?”

“I think so.”

“Mm. Very well. Can you get a message to your D’Artagnan this afternoon? It is important we begin immediately.”

Constance nodded, rising from her seat. “Of course. But—your pardon, Ma’am, only I don’t know what we have yet available to take. We have no arms nor intelligence. We do not know their strategy, we do not even know their position.”

“Not yet. But we can learn it, and in the meantime we can take them something to harry and hamper them as best we can.”

“What tool can that be? We have no cannon or weapon large enough to make a dent in their ships. We do not even have _disease_ , Your Majesty.”

“No, but we do have gunpowder. And plenty of it.” Anne’s eyes shone. A plan was taking shape already, a bright and burning plan shaped like rockets and flaming, oil-soaked crossbow bolts. Anne knew what a well-aimed crossbow could accomplish; she could well imagine what it could effect if it had been soaked in kerosene before being lit and fired.

What a pity she would not be on hand to witness the spectacle.

In as few words as possible, she laid the bones of her plan before her cabinet. It wanted refining, of course, and would require the input of those men so doggedly loyal to her husband and her adopted homeland, but as it stood, Anne knew the scheme was sound. And it would mean the end of Buckingham.

Anne wanted more than anything to make an end of Buckingham.

“We can destroy him. Harry him back to England a ruined man. And then we can put our network into play to ensure he never returns. I am sure there are men enough who could be goaded into putting their hatred of him into action. Such encouragements would be well within our capability, don’t you agree?”

Constance nodded, as well as the other ladies together. They were smiling, rosy cheeked and joyful, brimming over with purpose.

“After all,” said Anne, with a kind of casual gaiety she did not entirely feel, “why should the boys have all the fun?”

***

As La Rochelle was laid to siege, reports were made to the palace throughout the summer thanks to a carefully-curated network of seamstresses, washerwomen and dairy maids that stretched nearly the length of France. Small sums were exchanged for encoded information which even the bearers were unable to decipher. These fragments of intelligence reached Anne and her ladies, who decoded them with all haste and engineered plans and responses.

The Musketeers, for all that they adapted poorly to spying, did very well with this blend of the covert tale-bearing and overt attacks on the airships of the English troops. Airships, lit with the flaming spears of the French, burned and blazed against the night sky in a grotesque sort of light show before they fell upon the English ships, dragging them down to the depths.

The remnants of the army turned tail and sailed back across the channel, thoroughly routed. The Cardinal claimed La Rochelle as his prize, and the Musketeers quietly left him to the tyrannizing of it.

They reported their victory to their sometime commander, she rewarded them each with a piece of jewellery given to her by her father when first she left Spain, so many years ago, and thanked them for their service.

“She spoke like a King,” Athos reflected, as they took their leave.

“Yes,” Aramis agreed, “she’d have made a fine King.”

“She may yet,” said Porthos, and smiled.

***

Buckingham was reportedly making plans for a renewed attack on La Rochelle, but before this campaign could come to fruition he died at a dagger’s point in England. Anne, in the end, had nothing to do with it, but when the news reached her she did not regret the loss.

“I wished for so many years to murder him,” she confessed to Constance that evening. The bristle brush passed over her curls, which sprung up defiantly once more the moment they were freed from the inconvenience of tidying.

“Do you wish that you had?” Constance wondered.

“No,” said Anne. “It is enough for me that he is gone.”

“A relief, I’m sure.”

But Anne declined to call it such.

“Only the end of this chapter,” she decided. “The book on him is closed, and I am content to leave it thus. Now please, my friend,” she put her hand over Constance’s, and smiled at her in the glass, “let’s talk of better things.”

***

There is but one story left to tell, and it is not so much of intrigue or politics. Rather it is a story which begins with a wedding. At that wedding Mme Bonacieux became Mme D’Artagnan, and the Queen professed herself mightily cross to lose her lady-in-waiting.

“And my best spy too,” she mourned privately that morning. “If the Cardinal had not insisted on your dismissal, I think I might have fought this wedding. I would have told your Gascon terrible truths of you until he ran back to his family, and left you all to me.”

The bride, sparkling diamond-bright in a gift of new gown and jewellery given her by the Queen herself, laughed at this threat and assured her Majesty that not all intrigue need halt indefinitely.

“Of course D’Artagnan will have business in the area. He will not insist on cloistering me at the house. We can meet and plot however often you should wish it.”

“Yes, but a wife’s time is not her own. I do not see us enjoying the same intimacy of previous years, Constance. I am sorry to lose you.”

“I should be sorry to lose you too,” Constance promised, “if in fact I thought I would. But we will not be lost, your Majesty.”

She took the Queen’s hand in her own and dipped a curtsy, just as she had done in the garden some years before.

“You have my word.”

***

It soon proved that the word of Constance D’Artagnan was every bit as good as the word of Constance Bonacieux. She wrote Anne often, and whenever she was at liberty to do so, Constance also visited. She had the queen’s confidence, if possible, even more absolutely than she had done when she was still her lady, and so was one of the first to learn that Richelieu was using Anne’s own letters to her brother to strike at her.

“He says it’s treason to correspond with Spain,” Anne said miserably.

“Treason? But it’s your _brother_.”

“Yes . . . but in a way, my brother _is_ Spain, just as Louis is France. And Louis won’t understand, I’m sure, because he has never corresponded with Elisabeth—sorry, with Isabel—as I have with Philip. It’s all so foreign to him.”

“I suppose they were not raised so close. But don’t you think if your Majesty explained to him, he might see reason?”

“He might. But when am I to be given the luxury of this explanation? Richelieu guards him so viciously, I am unlikely to gain a private audience. Especially not once the story is put to him in the worst possible light. Augh, that man! That miserable, power-grubbing man. Why couldn’t he make somebody else’s life miserable? I feel if I cannot be rid of him, I can never be happy with Louis. He is so determined to come between us, however he can.”

“I am sure if anyone can make his Majesty see reason, it is you,” Constance said firmly.

“You are kind to say so,” Anne said wistfully. “But somehow, Constance, I cannot quite believe it.”

***

Constance met her husband in the courtyard at the end of the day. As they walked to their waiting carriage her fingers were linked through his, so he could not help but feel her worrying absently at his knuckles as she turned the interview over in her mind. D’Artagnan, long since grown familiar with her more quiet expressions, gave her hand a gentle squeeze in turn.

“Did you have a good visit?”

“Tolerably,” said Constance. “Though she is overwrought, and I am sorry I could not help her.”

“Well, she _is_ the queen,” he pointed out. “It must be difficult to help a Queen.”

“You say so, but we helped her once. I suppose I only wish we could do it once more.”

“Maybe the chance will present itself.”

“You are a mad optimist,” Constance sniffed, but when he caught her round the waist to help her into the carriage, she smiled to soften the accusation.

The journey home did not go as planned. They made good time through the first part of the city, but as they reached the outskirts, their coachman expressed a need to stop.

“Looks like bad weather coming in,” he said. “I know of a tavern ahead, however, which is a respectable place, and serves a good meal. If I could presume to recommend . . ?”

“What do you think, my dear?” D’Artagnan wondered.

“I think I would prefer the safety of a fireside above all else,” Constance said firmly. “If it is not our own fireside this evening, then let us preserve ourselves at another, that we may reach ours safely tomorrow.”

So the coachman pulled up to the tavern and saw his lord and lady into the warm, smoky confines of the establishment before he returned to see to the horses. A pair of beds were got for a decent price, and a fine supper ordered for only a little more. The young couple fell on the food as only young people can do, and made short of work of it.

Then, as Constance had proposed, they settled into a pair of chairs by the fire, and drowsed pleasantly as the wind outside began to pick up speed, a proper winter’s wolf howling beyond the door. D’Artagnan was just about to nod off altogether when the front door blew in, and a frigid blast of air woke him with a vengeance.

He and Constance both turned to stare at the party that had just entered—a collection of richly-garbed men, expensively cloaked and booted, and far too many in number to find beds enough at such a small inn.

Then Constance got a good look at the face of the man who led the party, and clutched at her husband’s arm in a fit of surprise and delight.

It was the King.

***

Louis was sulking as only Louis could sulk. The journey back from Val de Grace was intolerable. The road was in a terrible winter state, and the wind was getting colder by the minute. At last Louis complained so much of the cold that his men agreed to take temporary shelter in the nearest establishment they could find.

The place was charming, in a sort of rustic way, but what really lit the whole room up were the two people leaning over the arms of their chairs, staring at him.

“Well! Well, of all the people, in all the places.” King Louis was surprised and delighted as well. He half-hurried over to D’Artagnan, then thought maybe a King oughtn’t to hurry, and slowed to what he hoped was a lordly stroll.

“You’re both here. And well, I trust?”

“We are very well, your Majesty,” D’Artagnan assured him. “Married life agrees with us both.”

“Oh, well, yes,” Louis said, a prickle of unease touching his neck. “That is to say, of course, marriage is a fine estate. Very glad you’re both liking it. And, you’re on your way home? So am I. At least, I hope to be. Seems to be blowing up a storm out there.”

“Yes,” D’Artagnan agreed, “there’s a bad wind blowing in, Your Majesty. If you’ll pardon my suggesting it, you ought to take shelter. For your own safety.”

“Ye-es, the men were saying as much too. Not exactly sure where I can put up all my people this far from the palace, though. I have a few hotels lying around somewhere but most of ‘em are closed up, just now. No staff. Makes things difficult.”

“Might I recommend the Louvre?” that was the bright eyed girl, the blonde. Mme D’Artagnan. She was swathed in a velvet cloak of hunter green, dark as holly leaves, as rich and lovely as a painting. Louis was unaccountably recalled to a day many years before, under a summer sun in the garden, when this same girl had knelt before his bride and kissed her hand.

Damnably pretty girl. His wife had been fond of her too. For the life of him he couldn’t remember why Richelieu had been so adamant that she be dismissed. But then, Richelieu did tend to get all up in arms about the oddest things sometimes. Louis was starting to tire of listening to him.

Then he realised they were still staring at him, and he recalled himself to what Mme D’Artagnan had just said.

“The Louvre? Oh, but, er . . .”

Anne was there. And he thought perhaps she was cross with him. He’d somehow ended up siding with the Cardinal over something—he couldn’t for the life of him remember what. Something perfectly foolish, no doubt—and she had been a bit chilly for the past few weeks.

“Your Majesty,” the girl smiled gently. “Surely it would not do to take risks with your safety. If you will pardon my impudence, we should all be happy to know that our good King is safe from the jaws of the storm.”

The girl did have a marvellous turn of phrase. Jaws of the storm. Yes, very sinister. Louis shivered at the words.

“Yes,” he said, almost to himself. “Yes, it wouldn’t do . . . perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I should presume on the queen’s hospitality. Perhaps . . . yes. Yes, very well. I will do as you advise, Madame. And—oh!” Belatedly, but with a profusion of goodwill, “a very happy St Nicholas Day to you both. And Christmas, and all that.”

The pair thanked him for his good wishes, offered their own in turn, and remained in the inn while Louis hurried away, into the gathering storm.

Yes. The Louvre. How right they were.

He only hoped Anne would receive him.

***

After the King took his leave, D’Artagnan looked at his wife with the closest thing to uncertainty that he had ever felt.

“Will they be all right, do you think?”

“Of course they will,” said Constance. “How can you doubt?”

Her husband stared at her in open surprise. “Why Mme D’Artagnan. When did you become such an optimist?”

Constance smiled, soft and sweet. “Perhaps your ideals are catching.”

Then she kissed him, light as snowflakes on a winter morning, and D’Artagnan thought there were worse things to be than the luckiest man alive.

***

On arriving at the Louvre, Louis presented himself to Anne. Because of manners, he told himself. Yes, that was it. Good manners. Yet somehow the defence was not proof against his knees knocking beneath his cloak while he dripped melting snow on her beautiful rug and greeted her with cautious optimism and scrupulous courtesy.

“Good evening, my dear. You—you are looking . . . that is, I am extremely glad to find you here.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Anne said quietly. It was the kind of soft, _sad_ quiet that always made him half-frantic to fix whatever—whoever—had made her sound so sad.

Except this time it was he who had made her sad, it was altogether his fault (he didn’t have to know exactly what he’d done to know that much) and oh, botheration, he really should not have come. He definitely shouldn’t be speaking. But his mouth kept ratting on anyway, because wasn’t that the way with mouths? They just galloped ahead with themselves even before you knew what they were going to say.

“I—I wouldn’t dream of inconveniencing you this way, of course, only it’s getting very difficult out there, and so of course I thought . . . that is to say I wondered if maybe . . . perhaps . . .”

Then he stopped, because honestly, what _could_ he say? Yes he was the King, and all right, maybe some folks would say if a fellow was King then he got to invite himself wherever he pleased, but this wasn’t just any old house. This was his wife, and it was her household, and . . . yes, he was an idiot. A thousand times an idiot.

He was about to beg her pardon and show himself out when slowly, surely, absolutely unmistakeably, Anne smiled.

“My lord.”

Louis’s heart gave a stuttering lurch. “M—hm?”

“Would you join me for supper?”

A wave of relief crashed through Louis’s chest. Supper! Join her for supper? Well he should absolutely jolly well blithering say he would! For supper tonight, and tomorrow night, and every night they cared to have supper forever after, as long as it meant she wasn’t cross with him.

“Oh!” he said. “Oh, well—yes. Absolutely. Of course I will.”

And in his gladness he so forgot his manners as to seat himself uninvited on a chaise while Anne rang for another place setting to be laid at her table for her unexpected guest.

The snow fell thick and silent beyond their window as they raised their glasses, and wished each other the very best of health.

***

That night, while her household slept, Anne of Austria set out pen and paper. Bathed in candlelight, wreathed in smiles, she began to write.

_Anne of Austria, to Philip IV of Spain_

_A most blessed Christmastide to you, brother, though it will be long past by the time this reaches you. May God sustain you throughout the new year in good health, as he has done this year for me and mine, and may my enquiry after the wellbeing of your household be met with a joyful assertion that all is well with you and yours._

_As for me, I know it will gladden your heart to learn that on this day I consider myself among the most fortunate of women. I am happy, Philip, as I never dreamed I could be._

_I must write it again, for the truth of it cannot be contained in only one assertion: I am happy, and all is right in my world._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And she was never accused of treason, the end!
> 
> Seriously though, I seem to have misread your very reasonable request for "anything about Queen Anne" as " _everything_ about Queen Anne." I loved all your prompts and I didn't want to pick just one, so I hope you don't mind that I used them all.
> 
> I had so much fun with this story and I hope you did too. I love Anne of Austria and it was a treat to take some happy liberties with her romance with Louis, as well as explore her evolving friendship with Constance (whom I have long believed was getting up to a lot more behind the scenes than the movie ever let on, so thank you for bringing her up in your prompts).
> 
> Thank you again for the fantastic plot ideas that gave me the chance to dig into all of this. A very happy Yuletide to you, and I hope you enjoyed!


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